Illustration of Wienerberger safe ways of working

Keith Barker, Managing Director Explains Why Now is the Perfect Time to Launch Wienerberger UK’s New Brand Campaign

In recent weeks, Wienerberger has seen an increasing number of our colleagues, customers and suppliers head back to work as the nation’s construction industry re-opens. The industry has been challenged in an unprecedented way but is emerging out the other side with broad optimism. Our mid-year results clearly show that Wienerberger is resilient enough to cope with such an exceptional situation. Despite the lockdowns in many of our key markets, as a group we generated revenues a mere 5% below the previous year’s record value.

We continue to intensify our focus on innovative full building envelope solutions and digitalization of our processes and services. So, with recognition to both the challenges faced and our mission to improve people’s quality of life, it is the perfect time to announce the launch of Wienerberger UK’s new brand campaign ‘Getting ahead, knowing we’re behind you’.

Keith Barker, Managing Director of Wienerberger Ltd gives us an insight into the campaign and what we can expect to see in the coming months.

Keith Barker, Managing Director of Wienerberger UK

Hi Keith, thank you for talking to us about the new campaign. Firstly, what’s the message and what are you hoping to achieve?

“We want to give the building industry the confidence that, with our support, they can get back to work easily and efficiently. As we edge out of this period of uncertainty, we want to assure our customers that we are here when needed to provide the best support to help them back to work.”

Why choose to launch this campaign now?

“We are going through a period of change. Whilst many of our customers have re-opened, we know there is still a lot of uncertainty around the true economic impact of COVID-19 and naturally people remain cautious.

Construction activity in the UK is rebounding strongly as it emerges from lockdown. It is further supported by the government’s ‘New Deal’ which puts jobs and infrastructure at the heart of our nation’s economic growth strategy. At Wienerberger we have almost 100% of our workforce back on site or working from home so we can confidently supply our customers with products and provide the support, technical advice and training needed to get the industry moving again.”

And why the ‘Flame’?

“The ‘Flame’ is an integral part of the Wienerberger brand and throughout the campaign you will see the image used as the shadow standing behind our customer. Its symbolic but we want to show that we are behind our customers.

How important is Health and Safety in your company culture and what measures have you taken to enhance this considering the pandemic?

“The Health, Safety and Wellbeing of our colleagues, suppliers and customers continues to be our #1 priority. We followed the government guidance relating to COVID-19 safe working practices whilst also introducing some of our own enhanced measures to ensure we minimise the risk to our colleagues, customers, suppliers, visitors and wider community.

Over the past months, we focused particularly on the wellbeing of our staff, when the vast majority were not at work and isolated from friends and family at home.

More recently, our Health & Safety department have been concentrating their efforts on giving staff the confidence to return to work by demonstrating the physical changes we had made to factories and offices and the procedures and practices we had adopted to ensure a safe environment for a return to work.

We have invested in rapid implementation of technology and digital tools to facilitate remote working for colleagues, keeping them connected to our customers and, just as importantly, to each other. As a sign of our commitment to Health and Safety best practice we have set up a Covid-19 Resource Centre, accessible via our website and have also designed and implemented a new entirely digital despatch and collection system to protect the health and safety of our customers and colleagues alike.”

What other measures have been put in place to ensure customers feel supported?

“We have embraced the opportunity to make more of our processes and services digital. Digitalization was a key area of focus for the business before the pandemic but COVID-19 was a significant catalyst in our transition and in my view, this is for the better.

We’re still holding regular, but virtual, planning meetings with architects, specifiers and contractors, ensuring that work progress remains steady. We’re also redoubling our efforts to move resources, such as CPD’s and product information online. The successful launch of Showpad is an important milestone towards a state-of-the-art customer experience. Additionally, we’re ensuring that our brochures and samples can be delivered to those who need them, helping to facilitate remote working practices in the process. By placing a greater emphasis on digital solutions we’re putting ourselves in the strongest position to continue supporting our customers and partners.”

Finally, what do you hope to see in the future of the Construction Industry as we move forward in this new working normal?

“Moving forward, it’s imperative that the construction industry rallies together to get Britain back building, and this will require greater levels of collaboration along the supply chain to efficiently accommodate the new working procedures.

Spring boarding off government plans on house-building, we are optimistic that by a continued focus on health and safety efforts, sharing advice with the wider community and embracing innovation, there’s an opportunity for the sector to emerge from this in a stronger position than before.”