S acré bleu! If it wasn’t bad enough that the French could be superior towards us Brits about their food, wine – sorry, cuisine – trains and motorway service stations, now they can add timber promotion to the list.
Backed by Swedish and Finnish as well as French industry bodies, a new TV campaign has just broken across the Channel which is making serious waves. It’s small – just 30 seconds long – but perfectly formed. It urges viewers to use more wood in building, interiors and renovation and packs all the environmental messages in under the main slogan, “say yes to wood, no to CO2”.
The statements on renewability and locking up carbon aren’t new, but the commercial ties them all up in a neat, easily digestible package. And, confound them, being French they’ve also given the whole thing sex appeal. Personally I don’t see the attraction, but according to a straw poll of female viewers, the twinkly chap with the three-day stubble fronting the advert has a certain je ne sais quoi. His sign-off, “to build, renovate and furnish in wood is to contribute to our planet’s future”, rendered them particularly misty-eyed.
To add to the impact of the advert, and, as I believe the marketing speak is, give the campaign legs, viewers are also urged to “join the movement” by going to the website www.bois.com. Here they can sign up for bulletins about timber and how it can help the environment. Naturally, in the age of social networking, there are also associated Facebook and Twitter pages and an RSS feed.
Undoubtedly to some Brits, being left behind by the French is the ultimate dent to national pride. But the concerning thing in timber marketing and promotion is that we seem to be trailing in the wake of other Continental countries too. And it’s not just me saying that. It was also the topic of a blog by Timber Trade Federation chief executive John White on www.TTF.org in late November.
Attending the AGM of the European timber organisation Cei-Bois, Mr White was struck by our Continental neighbours’ well-financed cross-industry collaborative efforts to overcome barriers to timber through research, promotion and marketing.
He accepted that the kind of funds available for these activities in countries such as Austria may be out of our reach for the time-being, but he still urges the UK timber supply chain to greater collaboration.
“Working together around common themes we can at least get some synergy out of the resources we have,” he said. “It’s so blindingly obvious to me that our common interests across our supply chain far outweigh any differences in sector, personality or product.”
Mr White suggests that one route to get UK timber plc to act more in concert, is the formation of a “virtual Wood Industry Council” to “share collective intelligence about issues and how we might go about addressing them”.
“Harness that to the sustainable construction agenda and the need to decarbonise the supply chain and you can see a golden opportunity for our products,” he said.
The good news on this score is that the UK’s cross-industry Wood for Good promotional campaign is now regaining momentum and will be unveiling significant new developments very shortly (see the first edition of TTJ in 2011!).
And just one suggestion from certain viewers of the new French commercial: if a TV advert is ever on the Wood for Good agenda, for maximum impact, or should I say éclat, get a twinkly French chap to front it.
