RE2020, EPR, the tertiary decree: regulatory developments are inevitable in the housing and construction sectors. To better understand the communication challenges manufacturers face on these subjects, we spoke with Maxime Boileau, communication and marketing manager for REHAU France and head of communication for the GIP (Groupement des Industriels de la Prescription). A no-nonsense discussion on the real value of these subjects for construction and housing brands.
As a market leader, we have a responsibility to inform.
The daily lives of construction and housing professionals in France are punctuated by new standards and regulations. Today, RE2020 is on everyone's lips. What communication challenges must a manufacturer overcome if it wishes to speak up about this new environmental regulation?
The first challenge is to understand this new regulation, then to make it accessible — even to popularise it. In France, we regularly have to contend with new standards. It is a formidable way of moving us forward as a society on important subjects, such as those carried by RE2020, but it also brings its share of complications in implementation. Our first mission, as manufacturers, is therefore to properly understand these legal, regulatory and normative developments, so that we can discuss them with our client-partners in full knowledge of the facts.
What RE2020 and the future EPR scheme have in common is that they both address the subjects of the circular economy and ecology in a more global way. They pose a question to us, as manufacturers: how do we limit the greenhouse gas emissions of the construction industry, recognised as the second-largest emitter in France?
Our priority is to prepare well in advance so that we can help our customers properly understand these new regulations and the concrete impacts they will have on their professions in the short, medium and long term. We must then be able to explain, through very concrete examples, the solutions we are putting in place to help each segment of our markets navigate these changes smoothly.
At REHAU, our first customers are those who use our products. But we must also keep our customers' customers in mind, and thus be able to adopt a BtoBtoB — or even BtoBtoC — approach. We therefore need to develop a strategy to communicate appropriately with each of these audiences, with a communication methodology targeted by channel. The message is different for a consumer and for an architect. While a consumer looks at the ultimate benefit of the solution in relation to their problem, the architect works in project mode and is therefore more interested in the solutions and services we bring them. The customers who buy our products are looking for partners to create this circular economy.
Faced with these very different expectations for each segment, our biggest challenge is to identify the market's specific needs so as to adopt highly targeted communication about the tools, services and products we have already created to answer the challenges of RE2020.
As communication/marketing manager at REHAU and head of communication at the GIP, what is your approach to these subjects? What strategies have you put in place?
At REHAU, we have developed a communication strategy specifically for specification. It is a genuine territory of expression dedicated to contractors and project owners, including concrete tools to help professionals make informed decisions to build the housing of tomorrow.
Beyond the solutions developed to address the environmental issues related to our field of activity on a European or even global scale, we organise key moments of exchange with professionals to properly understand and analyse their needs. We sought to find out what RE2020 means in concrete terms for a contractor (new constraints for their new-build or refurbishment projects).
We can see that professionals are asking themselves questions, feeling their way. To help them, we regularly organise information meetings on RE2020 and the EPR scheme, notably via webinars, and we invite the engineering consultancies that took part in drawing up these new regulations. As manufacturers, we are stakeholders in the implementation of these future regulations, so we discuss working methodologies with building professionals. That was the case, for example, with a project in Paris aimed at improving airtightness during the refurbishment of housing: we worked with the contractors to find a solution that did not involve changing the windows.
In this way, we try to get to the heart of the action and support our customers, who bear the weight of all these requirements, in order to find solutions quickly for RE2020 and the EPR scheme (in particular).
Are there other regulatory developments with the GIP?
The GIP is an independent association of building manufacturers; we are neither lobbyists nor a trade union. The only partnerships we have today are with the FPI, the French federation of property developers, and UNTEC.
We worked with the GIP on construction quality through the “zero defects at handover” objective. Manufacturers sell high-performance products born of several years of research and development. Yet their installation can sometimes be neglected, resulting in poor product performance. So we worked on this issue, and on overall quality, with the GIP and the FPI in order to reach the zero-defects objective.
We also engage at events with contractors and project owners on the subject of the circular economy in construction. We present them with the challenges and the simple solutions that can be put in place to meet the objectives of RE2020.
If we take all the general structural and regulatory developments, beyond RE2020, what is the value for manufacturers in communicating on these subjects?
We are indirectly champions of the project: by communicating about this regulation, we commit ourselves to it. The value therefore lies in reassuring the end consumer and explaining that our product remains valid and meets the standards, whatever the current regulation. It is a way of coming out ahead. You have to be responsive to regulatory changes in order to win more market share and continue to move our society forward.
As a market leader, we also have a responsibility to inform.
What difference does it make to work on these subjects with a communication agency specialising in construction and housing?
As manufacturers working with other industrial companies, we do not naturally have the codes to go and talk to those who install our customers' solutions. An architect buys REHAU products through a REHAU customer. If we want to talk directly to architects, we need to know where they are coming from, what they want to know and what their challenges are. So we need a professional to get there.
The same applies when we address consumers. Our language risks being too technical, or not technical enough. We do not have the codes specific to this audience. A communication agency specialising in construction and housing thus saves us time. It also allows us to be more effective in our communication investments towards these audiences over the medium and long term. A GIP communication campaign runs for several years. So we need people who are our eyes and ears!