James Hardie – Multiple magic

A decade ago James Hardie’s brand was battered. But an innovative, long-term television campaign put the fibre back in its brand, cementing its position once again as market leader.

It’s hard to believe that little more than a decade ago one of the country’s best known building product brands James Hardie was struggling. Its market share had declined sharply, its margins eroded by an influx of cheap, copycat fibre cement products from across the ditch; its brand viewed as downmarket and cheap, associated with state housing and little else.

But the company fought back, developing a new, high quality product called Linea™ Weatherboard. “It was completely new technology, designed to appeal technically to the trade and emotionally to consumers,” says Craig Chetty, marketing manager at James Hardie.

But that newness presented a whole host of challenges when it came to launching the product, says Peter Brown of James Hardie’s advertising agency RoycroftBrown.

Traditionally the people who make decisions on building products are architects, building specifiers and builders, including group home builders like GJ Gardner Homes, which build about 800 homes a year. “But they are not about to suddenly decide to take on a new product when they don’t know anything about it or whether consumers will like it,” says Brown. “So we had to circumvent the whole process by appealing as much, if not more, to the consumer as well as to builders and specifiers.”

Plus there were the retail merchants to consider, like Placemakers. With the James Hardie brand so battered they too needed assurance it was still a valued and trusted brand that would be around for the long haul.

But selling a building product is not like selling a can of cat food, says Brown. “It’s a much more involved process. It’s very hard to target people who are thinking about building a home: the whole decision making process is such a long one. You need to be talking to people three to five years out right up to the consent stage.” They also want a lot of information, more than can be communicated through a typical television advert.

James Hardie produced a series of one minute, documentary-style advertisements, which it placed consistently into a few select programmes. “By owning the same slots for a whole year we created a property that was a bit more like a programme as opposed to just a television ad,” says Brown.

The commercials directed consumers to the tvshowhomes.co.nz website for more specific product details and other inspiration ideas.

In the beginning the adverts were designed simply to introduce the new material. Then as more Linea™ Weatherboard homes were built, real homes were selected to showcase the material and how it could be used on different types of homes.

Using new homeowners were particularly appealing to consumers because they conveyed such strong emotions, says Brown.

“There’s nothing better than a new homeowner, with tears in their eyes, telling an aspiring homeowner how great their new home is. Without television you just can’t communicate that emotion.”

As the campaign gathered momentum visitors flocked to the company’s website wanting more information, while new owners left their details hoping to be featured on the next set of ads. In just six years, Linea™ Weatherboard was the market leader in its category, accounting for 14,600 consents, out of a total of 28,000, at the height of the building boom.

Both Chetty and Brown admit the campaign exceeded their own high expectations. “Without television we would never have been able to reach so many different audiences and so many consumers so quickly,” says Chetty. “Building a home is probably the biggest investment someone makes so it’s a much, much longer decision-making process. But when we put our product on television, people suddenly went ‘wow, we love Weatherboard’. We hit all the right spots with consumers.”

 

Additional information

Advertiser  -  James Hardie, www.jameshardie.co.nz

Marketing and Advertising – Peter Brown, RoycroftBrown (formerly Lowe New Zealand)

 

About the Author

Lesley Springall is a business journalist and freelance writer with nearly 20 years experience in corporate writing and journalism. In 2010 she was voted New Zealand MPA Business Journalist of the Year.