M&M Timber joined an impressive list of big-name industry nominees at last year’s TTJ Awards – and walked away with the Excellence in Marketing Award.

The award recognised “campaigns that start with clear business objectives, develop a compelling sales proposition and communicate it creatively through an appropriately selected range of media.” The judges also looked for measurement of results, “as marketing is a commercial investment which should pay a return”.

M&M Timber supplies timber landscaping products to local authorities, environmentalists, landscape architects, property developers and the leisure industry. In recent years it has targeted its unique machined round timber products into the independent gardening industry and has launched some innovative garden design ideas.

New concept

Most successful of its launches has been Playguard, a new concept in children’s play equipment, using pressure-treated timber. It was the marketing campaign behind this product that won M&M the TTJ Award.

Recent European harmonising standards governing the use of preservatives in timber products were creating confusion among manufacturers in the play equipment sector. This presented an opportunity for M&M Timber to develop an industry standard that would satisfy the requirements of both end users and timber specifiers.

Under the direction of managing director Nigel Poyner, the management team evaluated the options available from wood treatment and preservative manufacturing experts. Having an in-house marketing team, Osmose Timber Enhancement was able to give full support to M&M Timber in the development and launch of “Playguard – preserved wood for playgrounds”.

Clear message

The message to the play market sector was clear: all M&M Timber products are pressure treated with Osmose Naturewood, based on copper and an organic co-biocide (alkaline copper quaternary). Proven for almost a decade in applications in Europe, North America, Australia and Japan, the system complies with the latest standards for preservative treatments.

Working with Osmose’s marketing team, M&M Timber’s Playguard branding took shape. The logo design used bold primary colours which could be easily recognised by both supplier and consumer. This theme was continued through the brochure, price list, information sheets and point of sale banners. A specifiers’ guide, available as hard copy and on CD-ROM, was developed and the message was reinforced with Playguard pack labels designed to identify the preserved timber and ID tags to be fixed to the finished components to “act as a quality stamp and confirm authenticity”.

Playguard was launched at the Association of Play Industries’ AGM. It was supported by direct mailing to key users and a PR campaign in 35 leading industry publications, targeting a combined circulation of 400,000.

The net result is that Playguard is well on the way to meeting its objective of being an industry standard in the niche playground market and has already built significant brand loyalty. M&M reports that 40 customers are using Playguard preserved components and that there has been “a noticeable increase in the level of trade enquiries who say the Playguard concept will help their marketing efforts into this sector”.

The TTJ judging panel said that its choice of M&M as winner was based on “the strength of marketing thinking behind its campaign and the Playguard branding”.

Extending the branding

“For the niche market that M&M is targeting, the brand and proposition ‘Playguard – preserved wood for playgrounds’ says everything that needs to be said,” said panel chairman David Evington. “M&M has also been careful to extend this branding beyond the specifier and customer to the ultimate users: parents and their children. Play areas built from Playguard are clearly branded as such to act as a quality stamp and sign of reassurance to parents that this is a safe place for their children.”

That is exactly the message M&M Timber set out to spread: “The design and brand management of Playguard has been specifically developed to send out a message of total confidence to manufacturers and end users,” said Mr Poyner. “Its distinctive branding and compliance with the latest timber treatment safety regulations will help Playguard become the first name everyone associates with the construction of children’s play equipment.”