Greenpeace’s ‘Give The Orang-Utan A Break’ ad campaign attacking Nestlé (now on YouTube) portrays the environmental damage allegedly caused by the company’s use of palm oil from the rainforest homes of the last orang-utans in Indonesia. This literally blood-drenched ‘viral’ is reminiscent of a similarly blood-drenched Friends of the Earth (FoE) cinema commercial, ‘Mahogany is Murder’, which attacked the timber sector 20 years ago.
But how the timber industry has changed in those two decades. The FoE ad prompted an engagement between the sector and environmental groups that led to a programme of certification which now provides a benchmark for wood sourced from well-managed forests.
Equally importantly, The Timber Trade Federation embarked on advertising to change timber’s image, initially with the award-winning Think Wood campaign, which promoted its sustainability argument when it had near-pariah status. Attitudes started to change and the process was continued by the wood for good campaign, which has just relaunched with its new ‘Wood Co2ts Less’ marketing.
Ecobuild last month demonstrated just how far the image of timber has been revolutionised, with tree icons featuring on many stands as symbols of eco-correctness.
But it’s not just views on timber’s eco-credentials that have changed.
In the late 1990s, specifiers saw wood as outdated and were switching to ‘newer’ types of products. A March 2010 survey of nearly 1,400 UK specifiers, however, reveals that specifiers now perceive the timber industry as the most likely to innovate, ahead of plastics, steel and concrete.
The image of this industry and its products has been transformed. Timber is now regarded as a product for today. Partly the result of the establishment of third party certification programmes and the introduction of many new value-added solid wood and panel products, but mainly because this message about timber is being more effectively communicated to specifiers.
Driven by advertising campaigns from the timber industry and its leading players, yes we can!
Peter Travis is managing partner of advertising consultancy +travis
