Not everything about the wood for good timber marketing campaign to date has been perfect. But as the old saying goes: half of what you spend on advertising is wasted, the trouble is you don’t know which half.
Generic marketing, like wood for good, is going to be even harder to evaluate than most promotion. At least if you advertise the Mark III Widget and Mark III Widget sales go up, you know your campaign worked overall. Wood for good did attempt to assess its precise impact in its first nine years, but trying to gauge how it influenced sales across the breadth and depth of the UK timber market was nigh on impossible.
But I would venture to say that, even if you could not pin down its effect on cubic metres sold, wood for good has been good for UK timber plc. It’s become a well-known brand, recognised by buyers, construction professionals and consumers. It’s given the timber industry as a whole a ‘profile’ as rival material sectors, concrete, steel and plastic, have upped their own promotional effort, particularly focusing on their ‘sustainability’ stories, however far-fetched! It’s also acted as a valuable unifying focus for an industry which admits itself that its main weakness is its fragmentation.
Which is why, I think, it’s good news that, after the previous wood for good organisation was wound down, a meeting of companies from across the sector will take place in London in September as the first step in the launch of a refreshed, reinvented campaign.
Chaired by timber building specialist architect Craig White, the event will be a chance to discuss a new wood for good approach; a lean campaign steered by grass roots contributors, with the bulk of funds going on ‘front line’ marketing, plus the award winning wood for good Timber Academy online learning website. A new campaign theme will also be put up for debate, focused on wood’s carbon-storing merits.
I know it’s a recurring theme of this column, but there is enormous potential for timber in a post-recession, increasingly environmentally concerned and savvy market place. Individual businesses will capitalise without wood for good. With it their efforts will be reinforced and the industry as a whole is much more likely to benefit.
