More buckle than swash

The international wood industry is not alone in reducing its chances of promotional success by adopting Australian test cricket great Keith Miller’s “spread out” approach to field setting. But neither does it have a swashbuckling champion of the handsome all-rounder’s greatness – able to win matches without recourse to strategy or convention.

Let’s be frank. Marketing and the darker art of spin are activities where the wood industry has successfully buckled without much swash on more occasions than should be humanly possible – to the point where the world’s most sustainable building material is now losing market share at record rates to substitutes that are often anything but sustainable.

Well organised and marketing-savvy, the global steel and concrete industries may be – but when it comes to sustainability and truly green credentials, they don’t have a leg to stand on in any comparison with wood (of the verified legal variety).

Nevertheless, they have successfully and legitimately zeroed in on ‘recycled’ and ‘recyclable’ aspects of their products, convincing green building organisations and specifiers along the way that they are deserving of more green star points and greater patronage.

And that’s the point: they have zeroed in with simple and believable messages. Most people still don’t know that wood actually holds all of the sustainability and green building aces, because the industry is yet to work out how best to play them.

And while it procrastinates there is an even greater danger – the rapidly widening gap between the ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’.

Haves and have-nots

The ‘haves’ in this scenario are the forest owners – the individuals, corporates (are there any left?), TIMOs (Timber Investment Management Organisations) and others who actually control the flow of wood into the market. Certainly in my part of the world, where plantation trees provide the bulk of commercial wood supply, the owners have been on the pig’s back for some time – thanks largely to unprecedented Chinese demand (although recent fiscal tightening by the Chinese government has since reduced the flow.)

The ‘have-nots’ are virtually all the people engaged in adding value to the log on its way along the value chain. From big sawmillers to small furniture manufacturers, the potentially deadly combination of an overpriced raw material, overvalued currency, productivity issues and declining domestic demand means that alarmingly few make sufficient profit to stay in business – let alone invest in marketing!

I am reliably informed, however, that the problem is not confined to the southern hemisphere. Hermann Kaufmann, one of Europe’s leading environmental architects, was in Australia recently speaking at Wood Solutions-sponsored professional development seminars for architects.

The Austrian timber design specialist told me in a separate interview, “The wood industry is sleeping while other building product producers take its market share. It does not promote itself well enough, right across Europe.

“The problem is that so many are small companies and they are not trained to work together – instead they fight each other, and there is no leading industry.”

Kaufmann says forestry is the big money-earner in the European wood business, but it doesn’t put enough into promotion and development. “There is a disconnect between the forest owner and the manufacturer. This is different with steel – they put money into promotion and into the industry that makes their steel. And, of course, the [green] laws are for them – not against, as is the case with wood.”

Bicycle rack syndrome

Kaufmann shares a widely held view that green building star-rating systems do not give adequate recognition to wood. He calls it the “bicycle rack syndrome”, where a bike stand outside a building – even in the middle of nowhere – gets the same green star points as all the timber in the structure. “This is not the right answer. It is the result of the biggest [steel and concrete] industries having the biggest advantages in the green building system. This is happening while the timber industry is sleeping all over the world.”

‘Sleeping’ is probably a bit harsh. There are several excellent generic wood promotion initiatives, including: Wood Solutions in Australia, NZ Wood (albeit woefully short of funds), the Malaysian Timber Council’s WoodMart concept, the rejuvenated Wood for Good in the UK, and the Canadian Wood Works!

Another promising sign of unity and marketing purpose on a large scale emerged at the recent National Hardwood Lumber Association convention in Nashville, Tennessee. North American hardwood producers are joining forces to reinvigorate the image of their wood products on the domestic market. And as the American softwood industry has done already, a bold ‘check-off’ (levy)-based advertising campaign is planned.

Unfortunately, it will probably be at least two years before all of the paperwork is sorted and the creative approved – by which time the US LEED programme will probably be even more deeply entrenched against non-FSC-certified timber.

Not cohesive

The real problem, however, is the absence of a cohesive international promotional strategy behind some of the key wood promotion messages – the simple things that separate timber from all other building products; the things that consumers and regulators want to be reassured about.

Credible things like proof of legality, certification, life cycle analysis, comparative performance, maybe even an international quality mark! Now there’s a thought for all our wood futures to leave you with.