The West Virginia Hardwood Alliance Zone this week unveiled a promotional video that highlights the benefits and history of Mountain State hardwoods and the significant role they play in domestic and foreign export markets.
The production emphasizes the “sustainable, magnificent, abundant” properties of West Virginia’s natural hardwood resources through captivating imagery and industry interviews. Lush, scenic paths and images of rich, colorful forests bring West Virginia’s hardwoods to life during the four-minute video.
“West Virginia produces some of the world’s finest hardwood, and the video gives you an excellent feel for the variety of woods that our state has to offer,” said Robbie Baylor, President of the Hardwood Alliance Zone. “This is a great opportunity to promote our hardwood industry to the international community.”
The Harwood Alliance Zone, a coalition of nine North-Central West Virginia and Potomac Highlands counties, works to provide competitive advantage for hardwood industry business relocation, expansion, and development in the state. The nine counties are: Webster, Lewis, Upshur, Barbour, Randolph, Preston, Tucker, Hardy and Grant.
Baylor hopes the high-quality video will give international markets a look into West Virginia’s third largest industry. West Virginia hardwoods are responsible for $85 million dollars in annual exports, making it one of the top wood-producing states in the nation.
The Hardwood Alliance Zone plans to utilize Facebook, YouTube and other social media platforms to promote the video.
“Video through social media is the best platform to spread our message around the world. For example, more than 1 billion unique users visit YouTube each month and a heavy majority of that traffic is outside the U.S.,” Baylor said. “This is an exciting way to deliver a message on behalf of our industry.”
Although the Hardwood Alliance Zone is creating an updated marketing effort with its new video, reaching out to international markets is not a new philosophy. In 2012, for example, a six-member delegation from China’s Tianjin Commodity Exchange (Tjcomex) attended business meetings, toured hardwood facilities and became acquainted with local timber industry producers.
China is the largest consumer of wood in the world.
“As the Hardwood Alliance Zone continues to build relationships nationally and internationally, it will continue to expand its online presence,” said Baylor.
The video can be viewed on the WVHardwoods YouTube Channel at the following address: http://www.youtube.com/WVHardwoods/.
