Strong support for a fresh generic timber promotional campaign has been received during an industry summit in London.
A re-launched wood for good campaign could cost about £700,000, with an internet, mail and email drive together with advertising earmarked for early 2010.
But the industry will have to do without funding from the Forestry Commission, one of wood for good’s three shareholders, a founding member and the biggest UK funder of the campaign. It will instead use its research expertise to study the carbon credentials of wood and make the findings available to the campaign.
Around 50 timber industry representatives attended the Building Centre summit, to look at revamping wood for good, which folded earlier this year due to rising costs and declining industry contributions.
“There was good support for wood for good to continue and for it to pick up on the carbon agenda,” said ConFor chief executive Stuart Goodall. “I was pleased that a number of companies said there and then that they’d provide financial support.”
Adverting agency Exclaim!, used by BSW Timber in its promotional work, presented a possible campaign to take wood for good forward, using an image of scales to “weigh up” timber’s carbon benefits against competing products, using the strapline ” Wood CO2ts Less”.
Exclaim’s Stephen Reed suggested a promotional campaign with heavy advertising to achieve a target 95% penetration of the key readership market in three months.
Wood-using architect Craig White, who chaired the London meeting, said “we can no longer whinge for wood against competing products”. He said wood for good now had a fresh, focused and “hard-hitting campaign concept”.
Tim Rollinson, Forestry Commission director general, acknowledged the impact of the commission’s funding withdrawal.
“In the future, the campaign will be stronger if it’s coming from the industry and the government influence of the Forestry Commission is not there,” he said. However, the commission will focus its expertise on the research and study of timber’s carbon credentials,
“There will be a lot of competition between the different materials to take the moral high ground and we want to make sure the wood part is done robustly and we can provide authoritative evidence.”
Campaign shareholders and The Timber Trade Federation will now target funding and flesh out details for a new campaign next year.