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| Timberland’s Hortiscope Facebook Quiz pointed consumers to a Virtual Forest to plant virtual trees. The quiz was a popular tab during the week of Arbor Day 2011, drawing more than 36,000 impressions. Photo courtesy of Cone Communications |
Company: Timberland
Agency: Cone Communications
Timeframe: Feb. - April 2011
For the past 11 years, leading outdoor footwear and apparel brand Timberland has maintained a long-standing commitment to environmental stewardship by helping to combat deforestation through tree-planting initiatives and sustainable agro-forestry (combining crops with forests). The company’s efforts began in 2001, when it made a pledge to help reforest China’s Horqin Desert. Since then, Timberland has continued its CSR efforts by engaging in hundreds of tree-planting projects worldwide.
“Our involvement in sustainable agriculture and tree planting is an important part of our commitment to protect the outdoors,” says Kate King, manager, corporate communications, Timberland. “We make and sell apparel and footwear for the outdoors, so protecting it is second nature to us.”
A TREE GROWS VIRTUALLY
Since 2009, Timberland has been actively engaging consumers in tree planting with social media through its Earthkeepers Virtual Forest app, in which consumers could plant virtual trees to trigger the planting of actual trees by Timberland. By early 2011, Timberland charged AOR Cone Communications to come up with new and creative ways to align the brand with tree planting, and make it relevant to consumers. The objectives, based on this mandate, were:
• Educate consumers about and engage them in Timberland’s environmental stewardship efforts, especially their commitment to tree planting.
• Empower consumers to take action in tree-related efforts.
• Create a distinct link for consumers between Timberland and tree planting.
“We wanted to reach the masses through media placements and social media,” explains King. “We wanted to make them more familiar with our efforts and the importance of trees, but also offer the invitation to get involved.”
According to Marc Berliner, VP, Cone Communications, Timberland had planted trees in China, Haiti and a lot of other places around the world. But it wanted to find a way to engage consumers in the topic—to get them to care more about it and understand why it’s important.
The 2011 campaign was about helping Timberland engage consumers in its environmental CSR efforts, particularly tree planting, and help empower consumers to take action, says Berliner. Cone also wanted to create a more distinct personality for the brand—something fun and slightly edgy.
ARBOR DAY—SOMETHING OLD IS NEW AGAIN
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With environmental issues and movements gaining traction with consumers over the past few years, Earth Day has become popular for brands and an increasingly crowded space. It was important for Timberland to use an environment-related holiday as a moment in time to talk to consumers, but it wanted to truly own a holiday from a brand perspective and have a unique voice in why the holiday should be celebrated.
Cone conducted research and results showed that although Arbor Day had been in existence for 139 years, it had no significant brand tie-ins and had been mostly forgotten by consumers—providing opportunities to lightheartedly poke fun at the holiday while using it as a reason to discuss Timberland and its tree planting efforts. The holiday’s focus on the importance of trees and tree planting provided a perfect, authentic opportunity to showcase Timberland’s ongoing efforts in this area.
“We did an Omnibus survey, where we asked people when Earth Day was celebrated and when Arbor Day was celebrated,” explains Simon Bowers, account supervisor at Cone. “Despite its founding over a hundred years ago, Earth Day, the younger holiday, is getting all the attention and Arbor Day, well, not so much. The statistics gave us a great hook to work with throughout our campaign.”
Timberland’s own prior research had shown that its target consumer is mostly men, ages 18-34, who not only enjoy the outdoors, but are an active age range for social media. In fact, according to a 2011 Pew Internet study, more than 8-in-10 young adults, ages 18-29, use social networking sites.
Armed with that information, Timberland leveraged social media as a primary tool for consumer communication and engagement.
Initially, Cone faced the challenge of time, having only decided on the Arbor Day tie-in early in the year. After working out the details (approvals on a Facebook Hortiscope quiz, Web programing, etc.), Cone developed a campaign that placed social media at the center of its media initiatives:
• Leveraged Results for Media Hook: Cone leveraged results as the media hook in the campaign press release and media outreach, targeting outlets and blogs covering business, the footwear industry and green lifestyle.
• Person-on-the-Street Video: Cone created a humorous person-on-the-street video, similar to Jay Leno’s “Jaywalking,” and released it via YouTube and Facebook posts. The video asked consumers about their knowledge of Arbor Day, their favorite tree memories and other quirky tree-related questions. The video call-to-action was for viewers to plant a tree in a virtual forest.
• Hortiscope Quiz: Cone created an online personality “Hortiscope” quiz that helped consumers identify their tree personalities and share their results via Facebook. After taking the quiz, consumers were directed to a virtual forest to plant virtual trees.
• Facebook and Twitter: Facebook status updates and Twitter posts supported the campaign throughout the week of Arbor Day.
• Home Page Takeover: On Arbor Day, Cone executed a home page takeover on Timberland.com, highlighting Arbor Day campaign messaging and driving traffic to the Hortiscope quiz and the virtual forest.
SOCIAL OUTLOOK
The campaign garnered a total of 91 million media impressions from the press release and proactive pitching, and more than 790,000 social media impressions. In all, it also delivered on its three primary objectives:
1. Consumer Engagement
• Hortiscope Facebook quiz: Total impressions, 36,310; number of page visitors that completed the quiz, 972; Hortiscope was Timberland’s most popular Facebook tab during the week of Arbor Day.
• Person-on-the-street video: Total impressions, 211,606; Facebook wall impressions related to video post, 210,360; views on Timberland’s YouTube channel, 1,246.
• Additional Twitter and Facebook posts: Total impressions, 543,954; four Twitter posts resulted in 197 clicks on provided links; impressions from Facebook posts throughout the week (not including the video posts), 543,757.
2. Consumer Empowerment
• Virtual forest application week of Arbor Day: Installs increased 138%; 6,430 trees were planted; a 35% increase from the previous week. More than 19,000 trees were planted in the virtual forest in April.
3. Creating a Distinct Link Between Timberland and Tree Planting
• Media results pitching: An Associated Press brief was picked up by more than 30 outlets, including Bloomberg BusinessWeek, Boston Globe, Forbes and CNBC.com.
IF AT FIRST, YOU SUCCEED…
With the success of the 2011 campaign, it made sense that Cone and Timberland would revisit the Arbor Day theme for April 2012. According to Bowers, a tree was automatically planted when a consumer simply took the quiz, rather than having to direct them to the virtual forest. Plus, the Timberland home page takeover was for the entire week of Arbor Day rather than just that one day.
The research Cone conducted fueled the Arbor Day tie-in, but it was also the effective use of social media that drove Timberland’s PR initiatives to raise consumer awareness of deforestation and empower them to make a difference. PRN
[To learn much more about CSR strategies and tactics, get the PR News CSR & Green PR Guidebook Vol. 5. ]
CONTACT:
Marc Berliner, [email protected]; Simon Bowers, [email protected]; Kate King, [email protected].