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Welcome to Real Outdoor Living!
The Southern Pine Awareness Network and the Southern Pine Council teamed up this year to address an area of utmost importance - promoting pressure treated wood directly to consumers. The effort, dubbed Real Outdoor Living (ROL), launched last month after nearly a year of planning, research and strategizing.
"Historical data shows that homeowners reinvest in their existing homes rather than purchasing new homes during recessionary times," explains SLMA President Debbie Brady. "This is the perfect time to speak directly to those homeowners and encourage them to use pressure-treated wood to add value to their homes and enhance their outdoor living area."
After a combination of consumer, competitor and market research, the tag line "Wood. It's Real." emerged. This is in direct response to consumer research which indicated that homeowners prefer the look and feel of real wood over alternative materials. Our competitors work hard to promote their products as "wood-like" without the perceived hassles of real wood, even though industry data says that real wood is still the market leader. The advertising agency coordinating the ROL campaign therefore advised that the campaign should play off of everyone's natural preference for the real thing - wood.
ROL works collaboratively with ongoing SPAN and SPC efforts, including the Raised Floor Living campaign. The campaign combines aggressive online and print advertising with special events and public relations. All efforts drive consumers to ROL's Web site, www.realoutdoorliving.com, for more product information, project plans and more.
"We are very excited about the Real Outdoor Living campaign," says Brady. "The timing couldn't be better and we feel that we have a very strong message. We're looking forward to rolling out more details and activities over the coming months!"
This newsletter will be distributed monthly to keep you informed of the successes of the campaign. Be sure to invite your colleagues, customers and friends to subscribe so that they too can catch the Real Outdoor Living bug! |
ARE YOU A WOODAHOLIC?
That's the question the Real Outdoor Living campaign asks consumers to answer. During the research phase of the campaign, a group of passionate and loyal wood fans were discovered. They were on online discussion boards. They had their own Web pages. And they referred to themselves as "woodaholics."
In order to make the ROL campaign more interactive, a free diagnostic tool is front and center on www.RealOutdoorLiving.com so that users can determine whether or not they are true woodaholics. The diagnostic is also featured in one of ROL's banner ads and is featured as a fun quiz on Facebook. Since the site's launch on April 21, nearly 2,500 Web visitors have taken the woodaholic diagnostic. |
RealOutdoorLiving.com Launches
Home is where the heart is, and Real Outdoor Living's heart can be found at www.realoutdoorliving.com. The site, which launched last month, is truly the lifeblood of the ROL campaign. All advertisements, PR activities and other efforts have one goal: to drive consumers to the site for more information. Of course once they get more information, the intended consequence is that sales of treated wood will rise.
Whether they are drawn to the site to take the woodaholics diagnostic, to get free project plans or to enter the $10,000 Backyard Oasis Giveaway - once they are on the site, the world of outdoor wood is at their fingertips. Initial data shows that the average realoutdoorliving.com visitor is looking around at more pages than the average number of pages people typically view on any one given site. This early success can be attributed to a couple of different factors: the wealth of information available on the site; and the fun way the information is presented.
The woodaholic diagnostic is chock full of useful tidbits about treated wood - all cleverly disguised in a very tongue-in-cheek tone. The scrolling project plans and podcasts are updated regularly to keep the content of the site fresh and interesting. The Facebook and twitter links speak to the "hip-ness" of the product and encourage a deeper connection by giving visitors a platform to network with other woodaholics. The chance to win a $10,000 Backyard Oasis Giveaway - that's the diamond in the crown of attention-grabbers, and nearly 4,000 visitors have already entered the sweepstakes. There's also the Fact or Fiction section (a.k.a. treated wood mythbusters) which dispels common myths about the product and highlights treated wood's positive attributes. Put it all together, and www.realoutdoorliving.com is a very unique, fun and hip package. A package that early statistics say visitors like.
To promote the site, interactive banner ads are appearing on a host of popular Web sites including HGTV.com, SouthernLiving.com and DIYnet.com (just to name a very few). The banners will run through the end of August and are expected to drive well over 100,000 visitors to the site. Print ads promoting RealOutdoorLiving.com will appear in the June and August issues of Southern Living magazine promoting the site. Add to that a firestorm of PR activities and a retail outreach program and you have what is destined to be a very successful campaign.
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