Our Plan — Openly Shared

The Marketing Plan

What is free, what membership pays for, and the order it all happens in.

This is a living document.

This is a living document. Our marketing plan evolves as the campaign grows. What you are reading reflects our current strategy — honest, direct, and subject to change as we learn what works and what the industry needs.

The A in the Window

Walk past a restaurant in South Carolina and there is a letter in the window. An A means the kitchen met the standard. The decal carries a code, and anyone at the door can scan it and read the inspection report. Nobody buys that A. The restaurant earns it, and the customer does the rest.

South Carolina is not alone. New York City has required a letter grade where people passing by can see it since 2010, and Los Angeles County since 1998. In Toronto it is a green Pass sign at the door. In Wales and Northern Ireland the law says the hygiene rating must be shown. In Denmark the smiley goes on the door and on the shop's own website.

That is the model for the I Speak Flowers decal. A shop that meets the standard florists wrote gets the decal for its window, free, whether it ever joins or not. It carries a code that opens the list. A grocery cooler cannot put it in the window.

Example of a restaurant food grade window decal with a large A and a QR code, for demonstration only, based on South Carolina's decal.

Free

The Decal
For every shop that meets the standard, member or not.

Free

The List
Every qualifying shop, searchable by postal code. Nobody buys a better spot.

Members

The Licence
The right to use I Speak Flowers past the glass: your website, your boxes, your van, your posts.

Members

The Team
Paid for by membership. The more shops that join, the sooner the team is hired to work on search, social and AI for them.

"The window is free. Everything past the glass is a licence, and that is what membership pays for."

The I Speak Flowers window decal issued by the World Cut Flower Commission, with a QR code to ispeakflowers.com.

What Membership Pays For

Membership is not a fee for a sticker. The sticker is free. Membership pays for two things.

The first is the licence: the right to use I Speak Flowers in your own marketing. No two qualifying shops are alike. The standard is the same for every shop; how each one uses the mark is not, which is why the mark is built to flex. Every shop runs its own campaign.

The second is people: a marketing team working for member shops on search, social media and AI, so florists can get back to designing. The SEO era taught this trade what happens when every shop figures it out alone.

Think of it as a pool: part of what shops already spend on marketing, put together to buy what no single shop could, a team and a campaign that point customers to the list. The aim is for membership to pay for itself.

How the Snowball Builds

1

A shop qualifies

It meets the standard florists wrote and puts the decal in the window.

2

Customers notice

They see the decal, scan the code, and find the shop on the list.

3

You call the shop down the street

Florists trust other florists. One call from you carries more weight than any ad, and every shop that joins brings the team closer.

4

The campaign gets bigger

Every member adds to the search, social and AI work that points customers at the list.

5

The trade carries it

With enough shops on the list, growers, shippers and wholesalers have a reason to put I Speak Flowers on their trucks, vans and websites.

Where a Flower Shop Is Found in 2026

The window works for people walking past. Most customers never walk past. They find a flower shop on a screen:

Google and Maps: they type "florist near me" and pick from the first few.
Instagram: they see the work before they see the shop.
Facebook: they ask the neighborhood group who to call.
TikTok: they watch a designer make something and want one.
Pinterest: they plan the wedding months ahead.
AI assistants: they ask for one name, and get one.

AI is the newest, and nobody knows exactly where it goes next. It may favor the shops with the clearest information, or the list it trusts most. What we do know is that no shop can keep up with all of this alone. That is what the team is for: a campaign that shows what a flower shop does and a grocery cooler cannot.

And it is the entire reason for one slogan across the industry. A thousand shops saying a thousand different things teach a customer nothing. One mark, used by every real flower shop in every country, means the same thing in the window, on every platform and to every AI, and every post points to one list, built by florists, that says which shops are real.

The Cut Flower App fits here too, as a tool for flower shop staff that grows year by year.

Platform names and logos belong to their owners. The World Cut Flower Commission is not affiliated with them.

The I Speak Flowers decal in eight languages: English, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, German and Japanese.

"Nobody knows exactly where AI search goes next. No florist should have to find out alone."

The Order Things Happen

Florists come first, because nothing else works without them. Grocery stores are already doing weddings and funerals. A wedding or a funeral is the one order that cannot go wrong, and when it does, the family remembers who they called. Marketing can steer people back to a florist, but only if the florist is ready, and only if there is a florist left to find. Otherwise it is a fruit basket on top of the coffin.

Phase One · Now

Florists Qualify

Shops meet the standard at local I Speak Flowers meetings, area by area, and put the decal in the window.

Phase Two · Next

The Campaign Runs

Members license the name, and the team goes to work on search, social and AI for member shops.

Phase Three · Upcoming

The Trade Carries It

Growers, shippers and wholesalers are invited to put I Speak Flowers on trucks, vans, boxes and websites, once there are enough florists to carry it for.

Phase Four · The Goal

Worldwide

One standard and one list in every country that sells a flower, so a customer anywhere can find a real flower shop.

Other Trades Already Did This

Some drew a line and let the customer see it. Some pooled what no single shop could afford. Some put a face on the whole trade. These numbers come from them, not from us, and each one has a source.

22,000+

South Carolina food businesses with a grade in the window

SC DHEC via WMBF News, 2023

24.8%

Of U.S. beer dollars go to small, independent brewers

Brewers Association, 2025

5,000+

Ace Hardware stores, most independently owned, buying together since 1924

Ace Hardware

4,500+

Best Western hotels, begun in 1946 by independent owners

Best Western

2021

Georgia cotton-farming families put their own farmers in their TV ads

Southern Drawl Cotton

1958

Colombia's coffee growers made a farmer, Juan Valdez, the face of their coffee

National Federation of Coffee Growers of Colombia

Change Your Trajectory Today

A florist changes direction by acting, not waiting. Our first job is building a team that works for florists, and that takes florists. Call the shop down the street, then ask when the I Speak Flowers meeting in your area is.

  • © 2026 World Cut Flower Commission. All rights reserved.