Saving our futures, one forest at a time
Mercer International, headquartered in Canada, is one of the world’s largest producers of market pulp and solid wood products space. It’s European wood-purchasing organisation is in Germany, Mercer Holz.
Our environment matters
The team at Mercer Holz realised the need to do their part in attending to the urgent crisis that is besetting the German forests: 1 in 4 spruce trees is dead, due to the ravages of the bark beetle and recent climate change events.
Forests in Germany are primarily spruce and due to floods, wires and drought within the last decade, their weakened health has caused them to succumb to the spruce bark beetle, one of the most voracious of beetles.
Forest owners in Germany are struggling to deal with this mammoth crisis. In response to their suppliers (forest owners), public pressure, climate change and viability of future business, Mercer needed a PR and marketing team to facilitate bringing their multi-year programme to life and they chose Bright8. We’ve worked with Mercer Holz to create a distinct voice for the initiative—both in messaging as well as visuals, and in alignment with the overall Mercer brand. We took their vision and brought it to life—from developing a comprehensive positioning and brand ID for the programme, right to website content and logo. We developed the programme name following extensive research on forests in Germany, the threats they face and the public perception of the industry.
The Growing Forests – Growing a Future (GFGF) programme has three main aims: to actively support forest owners in caring for the health and future of the German forests; to mitigate concerns that impede longevity and productivity of forests, including the bark beetle calamity and climate change; and, to educate the wider public about the issues forests and forest owners face today. The German name chosen was Unsere Wälder gestalten, Zukunft schaffen.
Our clients are long term partnerships
The GFGF programme is a multi-year one, that will continue to include press releases, website content, event management, media training and more. Our ability to strategise, our understanding of the media scapes, our competency in creating effective media relations and our ability to storytell are all well within Bright8’s wheelhouse. These skills, and more, are always at the disposal of our clients.
We view our clients as long-term partners: this is no different. We aim to continue to provide Mercer Holz with the PR and marketing support they need. Our talented copywriters are able to both write for the international landscape and in multiple languages. We do not just translate—that’s often not enough—we write in languages intuitively. For GFGF, all content is both in German and English, as we also involve media in Canada.
Bright8 further leads marketing and PR activities regarding the programme for the stakeholder landscape that includes forest owners, the media, local government and general public.
Versatility in cross-culture efforts
Our clients have plans to duplicate this programme around the world within its other sites and Bright8 welcomes that. As a PR agency, we are proud to be able to support our international clients. Not only do we produce visuals—banners, carousels and videos—in-house, but we are also able to provide our clients with German, English, Spanish, Portuguese, Malay, Italian and French copy! (Klingon not included.)
A light touch when needed
Sometimes, controversy is unavoidable and Bright8 does not shy away from facing the difficult topics straight on. This is where our strengths in research and understanding the media and public opinion come to the fore: we remain true north with our transparency and work with our clients to address the elephant in the room.
Mercer Holz is the German wood-purchasing arm of Mercer International.