You can quietly bemoan the ongoing loss of hardwood’s market share to competing look-alike hard surfaces, or you can mount a counter-attack by creating a grassroots effort to extol the virtues of the category in an attempt to reverse the trend.
That’s precisely what one major hardwood flooring manufacturer and the nation’s top distributor—along with the backing of the leading hardwood flooring association—are doing in support of the recently launched “Woodpicker” campaign.
The brainchild of Pat Oakley, president of Mullican Flooring, and Ray Mancini, president of UCX, the Woodpicker campaign—at its core—aims to educate floor covering store owners and their sales associates on the value of hardwood flooring. It’s all about providing dealers with the necessary tools and resources to influence consumers at the point of purchase.
“Ray and I frequently discussed the idea that we needed an industry-wide campaign to educate dealers—and, by extension, consumers—on the benefits of real wood,” Oakley said. “Most of us are aware of hardwood’s sustainability story and the fact that wood increases the value of a home. But we also know there’s some confusion in the market from the consumer’s standpoint.”
The flooring industry at large, accordingly to Oakley, has done a good job of promoting imitation hardwood as waterproof, pet-proof and even bulletproof, to some degree. “But there’s another story about how people have used hardwood in their homes for 200 years, and no one ever questioned the durability of the product,” he noted. “Homeowners have always had kids and pets in the house, but hardwood has always served the needs of the consumer.”
That overarching message was at the heart of the directive that Oakley and Mancini issued to The Blake Project—a strategic brand consultancy that was tapped to execute the Woodpicker concept and help get the campaign off the ground. “The objective was to draw attention to hardwood on the showroom floor that could cut through the confusion that the homeowner experiences when they walk into a flooring dealership,” said a Blake Project spokesman who was involved in the concept phase. “We all know resilient [flooring suppliers] have created representations and imitations of real wood planks. But most homeowners, who may be in the market once every seven years or so, have no idea. They might walk up to a display and think that it’s wood, but it’s really not.”
That’s where the Woodpicker campaign comes in. Playing off “woodpecker” imagery, the primary logo featured in all promotional and point-of-purchase materials depicts a woodpecker wearing glasses along with the words, “The Woodpicker Knows,” circling the bird. “It’s kind of an interesting little psychological thing because your mind tries to rectify that disassociation, which we think makes it more memorable,” The Blake Project spokesman said. “But this little guy is actually picking wood, and he wants you to be able to pick wood over the alternatives.”
Key elements
Phase one of the campaign kicked off earlier this year with the launch of thewoodpickerknows.com—a website that features an AI-powered chatbot where users can type in questions about wood floors and receive answers quickly. It also includes a Q&A section with the top five questions and answers on hardwood flooring, and provides links to related articles published by NWFA. The Preferred Picks section lists the participating manufacturers and offers a dedicated page for each, highlighting the strengths of their products, as well as a link to their corporate website.
To help retailers kick off the campaign in their stores, the partners have developed a comprehensive, user-friendly POP kit that provides a fun, credible way for dealers to promote the value of hardwood flooring to their customers. Additional marketing collateral features a triangle standee that lists the differences between real hardwood flooring and imitation hardwood flooring, which can be displayed in the hardwood section. Other items included in the kit are lapel pins, cut-outs, medallions, a window cling and wall posters. Participants can add the Woodpicker logo to their website, offering their customers the stamp of approval for their hardwood flooring products. “Think of it like the Good Housekeeping Seal,” The Blake Project spokesperson said.
The second phase of the campaign entails plans to develop an additional AI-powered chatbot for retailers and sales associates to ask questions about the best practices for selling hardwood floor products. Note: The information will be based on a broad category level and not tied to a particular brand. Other initiatives include social media campaigns, advertising and opportunities for other distributors to get involved.
There are even discussions about introducing the Woodpicker mascot at future industry events. “The mascot is a really cool idea,” Oakley said. “I can see it running around in costume at shows like Surfaces, NWFA Expo and even The Builders Show—wherever.”
Room to grow
While the Woodpicker campaign is novel in its concept and approach, it’s certainly not the first to put the spotlight on hardwood from a macro level. Earlier this decade we saw the kickoff of the “Real Wood, Real Life” marketing initiative, the creation of the NWFA. Then there was the “Build Your World” marketing campaign launched by the Real American Hardwood Coalition as well as FCNews’ “There’s Nothing Like the Real Thing” campaign, which was also supported by some of the big names in hardwood.
“The ‘Build Your World’ campaign wasn’t dialed in to a specific category,” Oakley recalled. “While some of the big sawmills and wood flooring manufacturers were behind it, it was more about using real hardwood in the home again, whether that was cabinets, molding, door trim or architectural finishes. What we’re trying to do is be a little bit more targeted.”
To that end, this latest effort aims to pick up where the aforementioned initiatives left off. “The NWFA’s ‘Real Wood, Real Life’ campaign was not off target—what we did with Woodpicker is give it more teeth,” the spokesperson said.
Moreover, the organizers said they hope the Woodpicker marketing campaign will be as powerful as other promotional initiatives seen throughout the history of flooring. That includes the famous “Carpet. It just feels better” campaign launched by the Carpet and Rug Institute in 1997 and ran until the early 2000s. This campaign was effective at raising awareness on the benefits of carpet during that time.
For that to happen, though, other channels within the flooring industry need to get behind it, the creators said. Take distributors, for example. According to Oakley, they stand to gain the greatest benefit due to all the products they typically carry that are associated with a hardwood flooring sale—adhesives, nails, finishes, tools, etc. “If we could get 20% participation from these companies, we’re well down the path of building something real special with it,” he said.
At the bare minimum, it’s essential that more specialty floor covering retailers get in on the action. Currently, there are about 50 dealers in the UCX footprint utilizing the Woodpicker point-of-purchase merchandising. As more distributors and their retailer partners get involved, the potential for that number to increase only grows larger. “I think this could really snowball,” Oakley stated.
For more information, contact Derrick Daye at ddaye@theblakeproject.com; Pat Oakley at poakley@mullicanflooring.com; or Ray Mancini at (800) 283-7500.
