Rod campaign aims to boost consumption of Swiss wood

There is too little demand for domestic wood in Switzerland. However, a prospering wood industry is very important for Switzerland. On the one hand, because 90,000 jobs are distributed along the entire value chain from forestry operations and sawmills to carpentry and joiners. On the other hand, because a young and healthy forest is of fundamental importance for the quality of life in Switzerland. A well-tended forest binds CO2, stores and purifies our drinking water and protects settlements from landslides and avalanches. However, in order for foresters to be able to manage the forests adequately, they need to find buyers for their wood.

For this reason, the Federal Office for the Environment and various associations of the wood industry became active and launched an unusual campaign that should lead to an increase in demand for Swiss wood.

The complexity of the issue calls for special staging and containers. Rod Kommunikation, under the direction of strategist Regula Bührer-Fecker, has developed a media-effective campaign that breaks new ground. In order to show the connection between the forest and the Swiss population, the artist Inigo Gheyselinck produces lifelike and man-sized wooden statues of important Swiss personalities. The statues correspond to a lifelike image of the persons.

The clue: The tree used in the figure comes from the same region as the personality himself and has already stood in the forest during his lifetime. The woods used are therefore up to 300 years old. The statues are inaugurated from January to November in exceptional and well frequented places in the public space. The chosen locations are in turn related to the personality of the statue and give an additional twist to each story. The importance of the personalities for Switzerland and the strong regional reference (due to the regionality of the wood) should make it possible to attract journalistic attention on a national and regional level. In this way, Swiss wood becomes a topic in the Swiss media landscape and the publicity of the figures simultaneously offer the population the opportunity to experience this special material with its history.

The development of the figure (from the forest, the milling machine, to the finishing touches) will also be documented and will be included in the reporting. In this way, the various professional fields of the entire industry will also have their say.

On January 12, the Woodvetia campaign will be launched with a press conference at the Natural History Museum in Bern. The first statue to be unveiled will depict Madame Tussaud, founder of the world-famous wax museum. Hardly anyone knows that Tussaud is said to have Bernese roots. According to her biography, she is said to have learned the art of wax sculpting from the doctor Dr. Curtius in Bern. She was therefore made from a 175-year-old little-leaf linden tree from the forest of the city of Bern. The winter linden is considered a tree of justice, on which death sentences were also carried out. It was used because Marie Tussaud is said to come from a family of executioners.

Throughout the year, new wooden figures are repeatedly placed in public spaces throughout Switzerland, so that the population encounters them in surprising places. In the process, the figures are always freely accessible. Because only when people touch and smell the statues can they experience the sustainable raw material wood in a sensual way and become enthusiastic about it.

At the end of 2017, all the figures - how many there will be is not revealed - will be presented together in Bern. Until then, the website Woodvetia.ch provides information about the locations of the statues. Further information about Swiss wood is also compiled there.

#Woodvetia - Action for more Swiss wood was designed and implemented by Rod Kommunikation in Zurich.