CASE STUDY: BARKER AND STONEHOUSE SUSTAINABILITY

A sustainable approach to
furniture retail

Sustainability is no longer a topic that brands can shy away from; consumers are demanding greater transparency and reassurance from retailers that the products they buy aren’t causing undue harm to the planet.

Barker and Stonehouse approached us to help communicate their sustainable strategy to customers, press and key stakeholders.

Shaping the story

Sustainability has been a central part of Barker and Stonehouse’s ethos for more than decade and eco-friendly initiatives had been woven into almost every part of the business.

Our job was to bring these elements together and shape them into a cohesive narrative that was easy for audiences to digest. It needed to carry weight, so numbers and data were important, but it couldn’t be too technical either – a balance needed to be struck.

Sustainability brochure

We decided to create one central asset, a brochure that explored each area of the business in detail. Spanning everything from transport and product development, to store design and reforestation projects, the story was brought to life across 24 pages using articles, images, and infographics.

Creating
multichannel content

Having created the sustainability brochure we were able to break the stories down into smaller pieces of content, bringing the data to life with short animations and graphics, which could be used across social media, e-mail and the website.

We also conducted video interviews with key suppliers, designed illustrated Q&As around key product launches and sparked ongoing conversations with the press.

Communicating
the story to the media

Establishing Barker and Stonehouse as a market leader when it came to sustainability in the eyes of the press was a key objective. To do this we maintained an ongoing conversation with our media contacts around the initiatives that the retailer had put in place, offering insights, updates and comments wherever needed.