The world’s largest alliance of independent hotel brands and a startup company in the custom framing industry apologized to the floral industry after the Society of American Florists pointed out that their email promotions disparaged flowers.
“We love flowers and chocolate, too, and our intention was to broaden the Valentine’s Day gift consideration set also to travel,” wrote Kristi Gole, senior director of customer strategy and insights at the Global Hotel Alliance (GHA), in an email to SAF. “We apologize to those we may have offended.”
GHA sent an email to its Discovery loyalty program members with the subject line “What’s better than flowers and chocolate?” to promote romantic getaways at Omni Hotels & Resorts.
That isn’t the only company response SAF has received this week.
“We LOVE flowers,” wrote Susan Tynan, founder and CEO of Framebridge in an email to SAF. The company promoted custom framed artwork and photos in an email with the subject line: “Not too late to not send flowers.”
Tynan added, “We’ll be sure to promote them in the future. Our tongue-in-cheek advertising was not meant to offend — we thought it was clearly a joke because flowers are always a great gift. We know flowers win the day on Valentine’s and every day in between.”
Read more at the Society of American Florists (Katie Hendrick Vincent)