Couple Partnerships?

We had a couple interesting developments in the past 2 weeks for one our clients, the National Christmas Tree Association. First, Earth 911 called here to start up discussions on partnering again to promote Christmas Tree recycling. I had a long, but productive, phone conversation with a their marketing director and one of their agency people. They seem confident that a sponsor / underwriter / advertiser can be found to re-activate the recycling center searchable database. I really hope that develops, because NCTA benefits greatly from being able to direct consumers to that resource.

Here’s an illustration of how important it is. I just received this email from a member in Michigan:

-----Original Message-----
From: Teisha and Eric
Sent: Wednesday, August 19, 2009 10:40 AM
To: info@realchristmastrees.org
Subject: recycling programs near me...

I am a member, and I have been searching your sites for a recycling program near us. The "how to care for your farm-grown fresh tree" information sheet says to go to "realchristmastrees.org" and type in your zip code. All this does is bring me to a list of farms, including my own, in my area. I didn't see anything specific about recycling programs on this page. Could you please let me know how to utilize this site correctly to find any tree recycling programs in Michigan?

So, if a tree farm has trouble finding out where/when/how to recycle a tree, just imagine how hard it is for consumers.

The second thing that came up just this week was a call from an agency working for Underwriters Laboratories (UL). They apparently are interested in doing something jointly with NCTA on tree care for consumers and safety. While we’re always a little leery of groups who want to tell consumers about trees and holiday "safety", we welcome any productive efforts by groups like the UL. We’ll see what develops from that.

Developing partnerships between our clients and other groups / organizations / companies, etc. is actually one of our specialties. We’ll try to make the most from these recent opportunities.