Johannesburg - Saatchi & Saatchi has been appointed the new creative agency for listed forestry products company, York Timber Holdings Limited.
Saatchi & Saatchi will be responsible for repositioning and revitalising the brand, which was incorporated in 1916, and has been listed on the JSE since 1946.
York Timbers is a vertically integrated solid wood processing company, which, with its subsidiaries, has the biggest market share of the South African lumber market and operates in various trade sectors and markets, both domestic and overseas.
With over 65,000 hectares of sustainable plantation, the core business of the group is sawmilling and its log mills convert round softwood into a wide range of sawn lumber products such as structural timber, scaffolding, furniture components, wood laminates, as well as wood chips for pulp and paper. It markets sawn lumber to the construction, furniture, packaging and other industries, as well as to timber merchants.
Commenting on the appointment Samantha Beresford, Marketing Director of York Timbers, says that Saatchi & Saatchi was chosen because of its considered response to the brief and points out that its Lovemark theory came across as a very powerful tool.
"This gave us confidence that the techniques were tried and tested and could be adapted to our traditionally old fashioned B2B industry," she adds. "As a global concern, we believe that Saatchi & Saatchi can help us to understand the brand attributes of the industry particularly from an international perspective," she says. "This will help us make significant changes to the way in which we do things eventually making York into a Lovemark."
Saatchi & Saatchi MD, Grant Meldrum, says that the account win is very exciting. "The great thing is that York is committed to practicing sustainable forestry, conserving natural resources and energy and continually improving its environmental management practices," he adds.
York actively promotes biodiversity by setting aside and managing areas suitable for rare animals and plant species to live and grow. Approximately one-third of the landholding (27 000 hectares) is set aside to conserve representative samples of the various habitats and ecosystems that naturally occur in the particular area.