The power of green marketing

In the eyes of most people, the flooring industry represents the endless deforestation and destruction of forests, which seems to be an innate enemy of environmental protection. What Guangdong Yingran Wood Company has done over the years has been proving the one-sidedness of this idea. The environmental protection behaviors of this company with the largest production and sales volume of solid wood flooring in China can be listed in a long list: donating to the Western Green Action, launching the "I Plant Trees for the Yellow River" activity, launching the "China Green Map" project...

This The key word for the list is "planting trees". "If we want to cut down 1 tree, we must return 10 trees to the nature. This will not only make up for our damage to the nature, but also give back to the nature." She Xuebin, chairman of Yingran Wood, gave birth to the idea. It was a few consumers who were concerned about environmental protection. They called and told She Xuebin: After buying solid wood flooring, they felt like they had destroyed natural resources, and they were very uneasy.

What touched She Xuebin more than the anxiety of consumers was what he saw and heard when he visited Europe. He found that the laws of many European countries stipulate that no matter who cuts down a tree, he must plant three trees at the same time. He has also personally seen many foreigners put money into the donation box set up by the World Wide Fund for Nature, and part of the donations will be used for environmental protection in China. Foreigners' concern for China's environment has made Chinese entrepreneur She Xuebin feel a pressure from outside the company's business performance.

This pressure was finally transformed into motivation by She Xuebin: The environmental protection and greening activities initiated by Yingran Wood Industry have attracted the attention of the whole society. In April this year, more than 600 people planted trees in Jinan Yellow River Forest Park, and tens of thousands of people in Signed on the banner saying "I plant a tree, everyone plant a forest". But when it comes to the importance of protecting the environment to the flooring industry, She Xuebin still has a sense of urgency in her tone: "We are a wood-consuming enterprise, if we don't take responsibility for protecting the environment, our survival will suffer. It is unsustainable, let alone sustainable development."

Guan Qilin, who hosted the "I Plant Trees for the Yellow River" activity, recalled the devastated scene on both sides of the Yellow River, the executive director of Yingran Wood Industry said: His eyes drifted out of the window. There was green eyes, the breeze was gentle, and a small stream meandered through the green. Some people are fishing on the shore, looking comfortable.

What Yingran Wood has to do is to display the power of green marketing, so that consumers can feel like walking into nature at home like Guan Qilin.

The first move: brand positioning

From "a real expert in global flooring" to "I love nature" - the cold and domineering technology has been replaced by a warm green proposition. The former makes consumers daunted, while the latter makes customers fascinated.

"Nature" is the most powerful brand of Yingran Wood. Regardless of the various reputations it has acquired over the years, the name alone is enough to make people imagine. Due to the huge influence of this brand, many people directly refer to Yingran Wood as "nature".

Early users of Nature Floor may still remember this picture: actor Chen Daoming sitting on the bright and clean floor, a glass of red wine, a few idle books, accompanied by the magnetic voice-over "A master, a master. Nature floor." , a real expert in global flooring", a king's demeanor. Now, it's the same Chen Daoming, the same glass of red wine and a few idle books, but the voice-over says: "Everything is natural, I love nature."

The span from rationality to sensibility is so great, but consumers are all Can readily accept. Even Guan Qilin himself believes that "I love nature" is a win-win advertising slogan: it can combine the interests of consumers with the social responsibility of enterprises, thereby promoting the economic benefits of enterprises.

Kong Fanren, the marketing consultant of Yingran Wood Industry, a well-known marketing expert in China, interprets this change from another angle: under the brand appeal of "great masters, great masters", "nature" will itself Positioned as a "global floor true expert", emphasizing the advanced technology and technology of products. However, in the survey of consumers, Kong Fanren found that most consumers' awareness of "nature" only stays on Chen Daoming's understanding, positioning him as a "global floor true expert", and "a master of The price proposition of becoming a great device is poorly understood. Moreover, with the improvement of people's living standards, consumers' requirements for home furnishing are not the floor itself, but the pursuit of a lifestyle and life proposition that they like, allowing nature to enter the home and integrating life into nature. The yearning for a warm atmosphere and the association to enjoy nature are more important than simply showing off the craftsmanship.

She Xuebin also admitted that the technical requirements of the flooring industry are not high, and the positioning of "the real expert of global flooring" makes "nature" somewhat embarrassed. Faced with the change in consumer demand for flooring products, "Nature" decisively abandoned the domineering "great talent", and instead advocated a kind of environmental protection awareness and green behavior with "I love nature", And take this as the goal of the company's unremitting efforts.

This effort to create a green image goes even down to the unnoticed details. In Yingran Wood, green is widely used as the standard color, from the posters on the wall to the knickknacks on the table; when you dial any work phone of the company, you will hear the song "Nature Song": "Fresh air, green earth, our beautiful nature under the sun..." Although the lyrics are simple, they are refreshing, making people feel as if they are in a green prairie. Every large-scale event, this song will be sung repeatedly, and attracts many people to connect with "nature". Once Guan Qilin led the team to do a road show in Fuzhou, a young man even ran up to the stage and asked for this song to be his entry in a local singing competition. Whether or not he sings on the field at the end, this lad will be impressed by "Nature" because of this song.

She Xuebin has a badge he wears with only a circle on it. In 2005, the circle replaced a bulky elephant as the logo of Yingran Wood. Such a change can reflect Yingran's ingenuity: the elephant is reminiscent of a forest; the circle tells people more directly: I am green.

In the office, She Xuebin demonstrated the company's logo sign language for photographers to take pictures. He raised his hands slightly, like holding a green earth. Every time he demonstrates, he has to whisper a sentence: I love nature. From his focused expression, it seems that the source of Yingran Wood's green image can be found.

Second measure: Green products

The raw materials are efficient and environmentally friendly, and the synthetic products are safe and healthy—the secret lies in the active ecological paint and innovative green thinking.

Simply planting trees is not enough to describe how green an enterprise is. When many companies use tree planting as a show to show to the media and consumers, Yingran can integrate the concepts of nature, green and environmental protection into their products.

In 2007, Yingran Wood launched a kind of ecological floor with environmental protection function. A new type of fiber factor material is evenly infiltrated into the floor, which can not only prolong the service life of the floor, but also have good mold resistance Antibacterial function. In order to reduce the amount of wood harvesting, this ecological floor uses "regenerated wood, fast-growing forest" as raw materials, saving a lot of precious species.

Subsequently, the "secret weapon" active ecological paint developed by Yingran Wood took 3 years to come out. Its most obvious feature is that it can continuously release negative ions, and this substance, called "vitamins in the air", can effectively remove harmful substances such as formaldehyde, ammonia, benzene, etc. in the air, and its function of comprehensively purifying the air. As you can imagine. For the launch ceremony of the ecologically active paint, Yingran Wood chose the location by the beautiful West Lake. Such a choice is obviously not meaningful. "Hangzhou is the most suitable place for people to live in China, and our products can bring users a natural taste, just like enjoying the fresh air by the West Lake."

Yingran Wood Industry will this "secret" "Weapon" has been applied to the new environmentally friendly floor, and it has also been creatively used on both sides of the floor, making environmental protection the bottom of the board. "Everyone has always believed that the bottom of the floor has nothing to do with environmental protection. In fact, this is a misunderstanding." Guan Qilin drew a three-dimensional floor on the paper and stopped the pen tip at the bottom. "This place is actually the easiest place to hide dirt and filth. Because it is not cleaned for a long time, some harmful substances will penetrate into the ground through the floor and have an impact on people's health." Then, he smeared heavily on the place where he stayed. a sum. "A good floor needs to look at both sides. Using active ecological paint on both sides of the floor allows consumers to lie down and enjoy the health of nature and experience the deep breath of the forest at home."

During transportation, the floor and the floor There will be friction between them, and this friction can sometimes scratch the surface of the floor and hinder the appearance. The traditional practice is to put a layer of pearl cotton in the middle of the two floors for isolation. Although many manufacturers have been able to produce EPE with environmental protection functions, Guan Qilin still feels that the extensive use of EPE is a great waste of natural resources. Yingran's new eco-friendly floor just avoids this. Due to the unique super wear-resistant factor added to the active ecological paint, the force that this floor can withstand is greatly increased than that of ordinary floors. An adult holds a coin with normal strength. Scratches across the floor and leaves no scratches at all.

This feature provides convenience for environmental protection and saving in the transportation process. People can save the step of wrapping the pearl cotton and put two new environmentally friendly floors together boldly. Due to the improvement of this process, the pearl cotton saved by each factory in Yingran every year is enough to cover the Great Wall. This is in line with the expert's point of view: if an enterprise can consider the protection and utilization of resources and energy when designing products, adopt no-waste, less-waste technologies and clean processes in product production, and consider the ease of recycling of products at the product disposal stage And disposal, this enterprise can be considered to be green. Now, Yingran Wood has established more than 20 joint venture factories in Asia, South America and Africa.

In order to allow consumers to accept this new type of environmentally friendly product, many stores across the country have placed active ecological paint negative ion detectors, and invited consumers to specialty stores to conduct experiments and test this product. The degree of wear resistance and its negative ion release allow consumers to feel the existence of active ecological paint more intuitively. Due to the complex process used in the new environmentally friendly flooring, Yingran also systematically trained the shopping guides in all stores, teaching them how to use plain language to advertise to consumers.

In China, many people have a "solid wood complex", believing that using solid wood is both comfortable and classy. Many more discerning consumers often forget that solid wood products are made of natural resources, and it is normal to have flaws, and refuse floors with scars. In order to choose high-quality wood to produce scar-free floors, flooring companies have resulted in a lot of waste of wood. In Europe, 1 cubic meter of logs can make 45-50 square meters of floor, while in China, only 20 square meters of floor can be made. In other words, the loss of logs produced in Europe is 50%-55%, while the loss in China is 80%.

A tree takes at least 60 years to make hardwood floors, which is close to the lifespan of a person, and some take longer. Moreover, domestic wood raw materials have become less and less, and since many countries have issued wood export restrictions, it is becoming more and more difficult to import wood from abroad. Since 2002, She Xuebin has been thinking about solutions. Later, through the use of artificial boards that meet environmental protection standards, and even the fast-growing bamboo, Yingran reinterpreted the "solid wood complex": using bamboo as the base material, through the rubbing technique, the texture and texture of the solid wood floor can be clearly reproduced on the bamboo. . Due to the use of alternative materials, the percentage of wood raw materials in the product has been decreasing, and by October 2007, the percentage had dropped to 33%, well below the industry average.

The third measure: dyeing green customers

Through green public welfare activities, cultivate green consumers-expect to raise the low-level green awareness of 8% or 40% to more than 60%.

Irregular deforestation can damage the environment and lead to environmental disasters. So does not cutting down will protect the environment? She Xuebin believes that this is a common misunderstanding, "reasonable felling is beneficial to environmental protection." Because the withering of many old trees in the forest will breed insects and fungi, which not only affects the growth of the surrounding small trees, but also causes the current black river disaster. one. Many consumers do not understand this, which makes She Xuebin realize how important it is to popularize environmental protection knowledge to consumers.

As the drafting unit of the national standard for solid wood flooring, Yingran Wood has released a series of "Consumer White Papers" to guide consumers to choose flooring more rationally. More energy is used to develop green awareness among consumers.

A global survey report shows that 66% of UK consumers are willing to pay more for green food, 80% of Germans and 67% of Dutch consider environmental issues when shopping,77 % of U.S. consumers consider themselves environmentalists and are willing to pay more for non-polluting products and packaging that can be recycled. In China, only 40% of people are willing to choose products with green labels. In some remote villages, the figure is 8%. In Guan Qilin's view, only by cultivating a group of green consumers can Yingran Wood's green marketing be implemented.

Among Yingran's series of green activities, "I plant a tree for the Yellow River" is the most popular. In recent years, due to the continuous destruction of vegetation in the Yellow River Basin, the average forest coverage rate is only 13.9%, which is far lower than the forest coverage rate of more than 70% along the rivers in other countries. She Xuebin chose the location of the tree planting in the Yellow River entirely out of a simple idea: "I hope that one day, the children of the Chinese nation will be even more proud when they stand in front of the Yellow River Mother sculpture, because not only does the Yellow River nourish us, we It also feeds back the mother river."

The road map of "I plant trees for the Yellow River" starts from Hukou on the Yellow River and extends to Liujiaxia Reservoir, the sandy area of Inner Mongolia, and the Loess Plateau... Only in 2007 at Hukou on the Yellow River, Ying Ran Just over 10,000 trees were planted. At the scene of the event, an elderly man in his sixties came from Zhengzhou and carefully cultivated soil for the saplings with trembling hands. A lady who was not able to participate in the tree planting activity even took her daughter, who is still in elementary school, to the Yingran Wood Specialty Store in the city where she was located, and asked the staff of the specialty store to tell her about this public welfare activity, and let the little girl personally Feel how to grow as a socially responsible person. As said in the promotional video of the "I Plant a Tree for the Yellow River" campaign: "Planting a tree is very small, and it will hardly change the status quo of the mother river, but planting a tree is very big, because it carries all the people of Yingran. Even the green dream of all Chinese people."

Although she is not a user of Yingran, this lady can't hide her admiration for Yingran, which is very likely to prompt her or her family to buy. She Xuebin is also very excited by the attention this event has received: according to incomplete statistics, various media have reprinted the news of this event more than 70,000 times, and Yingran has received 35,672 registration calls and 20,781 e-mails. No wonder She Xuebin would say: "This is more practical and effective than terminal promotion."

On She Xuebin's "China Green Map", it is not just the Yellow River that attracts attention. He plans to carry out 10-year greening and environmental protection activities, establish more than 20 "nature" ecological forests, plan a greening area of nearly 10,000 mu, and plant 1 million trees. At the same time, about 10,000 people will be invited to directly participate in tree planting, attracting nearly 800 million people to pay attention to ecological greening.

At present, Yingran Wood has about 500,000 consumers. Even if only one thousandth of these 800 million people become Yingran users, it is a considerable wealth.

The fourth trick: sublimation behavior

Discover the beauty of nature, and turn enemies into friends with nature—to gain the favor of international capital, and to conquer the world with ambition.

"Only if you love nature, will you be willing to repay nature. When you have feelings for nature, you will devote your own feelings to repay nature. To love nature, the most direct way is to feel the charm of nature in person. To discover the beauty of nature." Following this idea, Yingran sublimated the simple tree planting activity to "discover the beauty of nature". Most of Yingran's consumers live in busy urban life and have no time to get close to nature, while She Xuebin hopes to "lead people to find the most mellow and beautiful places in nature through the discovery of nature, and feel and enjoy the picturesque nature in nature. mood".

In January of this year, Yingran chose Jiuzhaigou, China as the first stop of its beauty search activity, which was to hold a New Year's blessing ceremony. At the grand ceremony, the invited consumers participated in the blessing ceremony hosted by well-known Tibetan Buddhist monks, recited the blessing scriptures, turned the prayer wheel, and listened to the Sanskrit sounds of the heavenly sounds.

In addition to this expansion in breadth, Yingran also extended its tree planting activities vertically.

"Everyone is planting fast-growing forests that are easy to grow. As a timber industry, can we go further?" This question was originally raised by Kong Fanren, a marketing consultant. His idea is: making solid wood floors sometimes requires cutting down some precious tree species. If we only plant fast-growing forests, it is very unfair to nature. After consulting with forestry experts, Kong Fanren learned that under modern technical conditions, some more precious species, such as nanmu, which has become extinct in China, can also grow faster. Kong Fanren's proposal has been warmly responded by She Xuebin. Now, Yingran is cooperating with relevant departments, investing in scientific research, and considering choosing some places with suitable climatic conditions to plant Nanmu. "Compared with buying two small saplings in general, and planting some soil and watering in the spring, planting precious tree species is much more meaningful."

In green public welfare student aid activities, Yingran The practice is also more in-depth than other companies. In addition to launching the "Green Cradle Student Aid Project" in five forestry colleges and universities across the country, which is committed to cultivating environmentally friendly green talents in the century, and subsidizing college students, Yingran has also set up research and development funds to carry out in-depth cooperation with universities in product research and development projects. It provides a new economic platform for the development of environmentally friendly products. The active ecological paint floor is a scientific and technological achievement developed by a team of experts jointly formed by schools and enterprises for three years.

In the process of trying to create a greener enterprise, Yingran Wood, which makes a living from logging, is turning its enemy into a friend of nature, which also makes it win the respect of international capital: on the 11th of last month, Yingran received a joint investment of $100 million from Morgan Stanley and the World Bank Group International Finance Corporation (IFC). Morgan Stanley's name goes without saying, and IFC, as a global development organization composed of more than 160 countries, invests in only two goals: reducing poverty and promoting sustainable development.

When Tang Jun went to the United States to do a roadshow for Shanda, a Wall Street investment analyst asked a question he did not expect: Will Shanda become a green company? She Xuebin, who is ambitiously preparing to conquer the world, has obviously prepared an answer for this question.