Speaking credibly to a community of professional arborists

The question

Arborists climb and work in trees for a living, and they form a skilled, specialized and closely connected community.

The brand had two questions. How should it show their work, and what would make its communication credible to people who know the job better than any marketer? And where should its business with arborists go, well past the next product cycle?

Our approach

We met arborists in the US, Canada, Germany and the UK at climbing competitions and joined them on site, so the program began from the job as arborists do it, up in the trees and among their peers.

We set that evidence beside the brand’s previous research and an audit of how it had spoken to arborists, then tested emerging communication principles online with more arborists. For the roadmaps, people from the company’s R&D and product development teams joined the immersions, and a workshop across markets shaped alternative roadmaps with them.

What the team came away with

The work came back in three parts: a debrief with a segmentation of arborists, a communication playbook with illustrated principles, and long-term roadmaps for the business.

The debrief was taken to teams in several of the company’s offices, so marketing and product colleagues in different markets had the same picture of the people they sell to and could plan from it together.

The playbook showed how each principle could look in practice, for anyone briefing communication to arborists. With alternative roadmaps set side by side, each with its trade-offs in view, the business had real options to weigh for where its work with this community should go next.