We may not be up to Hello levels, but we’re not doing badly on the celeb count. On page three we’ve got Laurence Llewellyn-Bowen, cuffs and all, and on page six Charlie Dimmock.
The former has been signed up by Kronospan to push its panel products, while Ms Dimmock is front-person for the Nordic First campaign. We could have run a picture of Ground Force presenter Tommy Walsh, who guested at the Wood for Good TV commercial preview, but we thought that would be over-egging it. Instead we’ve got an equally starry shot from the event of Wood for Good managing director Charles Trevor, four TTJ readers and yours truly.
There will no doubt be some people who see the industry’s use of celebrity pulling power and high profile, big budget multi-media campaigning as so much puff and frippery – little to do with the daily battle of selling timber. But according to initial feedback on Wood for Good that’s not the consensus. No-one is over-fond of spending money on advertising, but these days few businesses can afford not to and there seems to be growing appreciation of the fact that the timber trade is starting to punch its promotional weight.
Two other trade organisations are also upping their marketing effort. The Trussed Rafter Association is producing literature to target the growing ‘room in the roof’ business, while timber pallet, case and packaging body TIMCON plans to make the most of wood’s ability to conform to latest packaging waste and recycling rules (of which more later). Both are also pushing to expand membership. The logic is obvious. Divided you get chewed over by marketing-savvy competitors. United, your message is far more coherent and paying the likes of Larry and Charlie is much less painful on the individual pocket.
