2023 Winner
GoldBest in Data-Driven Marketing
BronzeBest in Consumer Engagement
WWF
"re:grow"
Initiative
"re:grow"
Initiative
Biodiversity is a critical element of the processes that support all life on earth. A recent UN report on climate provided indisputable evidence that Canada’s biodiversity loss has reached a crisis point and urgent action is needed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and keep global warming
below 1.5 degrees.
In 2020, The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) launched its bold 10-year plan to reverse wildlife loss and fight climate change by restoring 100 million hectares of carbon-rich ecosystems. They’re on a mission to rally the next generation of Canadians who often struggle to feel the immediate effects of environmental action. If they could show them that one small action can inspire another, then they could spark a movement leading to greater positive environmental change.
According to a WWF independent research study, most individuals want to make a difference for the environment and are looking to connect with like-minded people, but they don’t always know how to start. They identified a clear and simple way for Canadians to help by growing more native plants, which helps to restore biodiversity and protect against habitat and wildlife loss.
A campaign centered around a new digital destination that brings together all of WWF Canada’s restoration programs, and invites Canadians to sign-up and track the actions they take – mapping out the native plants they grow and seeing how their collective efforts are benefiting
their country’s ecosystems.
Success was contingent on rallying the audiences most likely to take action. So they built custom audience segments based on those most interested in eco-conscious topics like gardening, composting and sustainable living. They then used intent signals to serve their message alongside either green-forward content (i.e. gardening) or with climate-adverse content (i.e. grid lock or oil spills). Programmatic and social ads featured region-specific native plants to give the campaign greater relevancy and encourage audiences to plant the right local flora.
They identified a relevant social trend in how younger Canadians were using the term “Touch Grass” as a way of telling someone to "go outside," implying they're spending too much time online and it's affecting their wellbeing. They playfully hijacked those conversations across Twitter to redirect Canadians to their cause in real-time.
In order to ensure they were not contributing to the problem, they worked with a third-party to measure the full carbon emission impact of their marketing, from agency production to servers, cloud computing, and emissions from user devices, and they offset this by donating to carbon compensation projects and reforestation organizations to achieve carbon neutral advertising.
They developed an entirely new data signal to inform their campaign called Flora targeting. By working with environmentalists they mapped out the geographic barriers of specific flora, factoring in seasonality, to ensure the right native species were promoted to the right audiences across programmatic display, social and online video.
The “re:grow” platform acts as a social media platform for those supporting Canada’s biodiversity, factoring in geolocation, date, specific actions taken and visualizing the information through a map and social feed interface , which reveals insights about the “re:grow” movement’s collective impact.
With a modest media budget, “re:grow” demonstrated that Canadians were ready to take action to protect and restore nature and wildlife with a 90% increase in Web site traffic and over 1,500 actions taken and unique sign-ups at re:grow.ca.
The campaign had 7M total paid and earned impressions. Flora targeting drove a 150% increase in click-through engagement and an 800% return in unique interactions on Twitter sparking further conversations and positive actions plus exceeded frequency and reach KPIs on TikTok an OLV impression delivery of 105% and over 90% VCR showed Canadians were engaged and wanted to learn how to take action.
“re:grow” wasn’t intended to be an overnight solution to Canada’s biodiversity loss, but results suggest it helped inspire more Canadians to re:learn, re:plant and re:connect, and start on a path to
regenerate Canada together.
below 1.5 degrees.
In 2020, The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) launched its bold 10-year plan to reverse wildlife loss and fight climate change by restoring 100 million hectares of carbon-rich ecosystems. They’re on a mission to rally the next generation of Canadians who often struggle to feel the immediate effects of environmental action. If they could show them that one small action can inspire another, then they could spark a movement leading to greater positive environmental change.
According to a WWF independent research study, most individuals want to make a difference for the environment and are looking to connect with like-minded people, but they don’t always know how to start. They identified a clear and simple way for Canadians to help by growing more native plants, which helps to restore biodiversity and protect against habitat and wildlife loss.
A campaign centered around a new digital destination that brings together all of WWF Canada’s restoration programs, and invites Canadians to sign-up and track the actions they take – mapping out the native plants they grow and seeing how their collective efforts are benefiting
their country’s ecosystems.
Success was contingent on rallying the audiences most likely to take action. So they built custom audience segments based on those most interested in eco-conscious topics like gardening, composting and sustainable living. They then used intent signals to serve their message alongside either green-forward content (i.e. gardening) or with climate-adverse content (i.e. grid lock or oil spills). Programmatic and social ads featured region-specific native plants to give the campaign greater relevancy and encourage audiences to plant the right local flora.
They identified a relevant social trend in how younger Canadians were using the term “Touch Grass” as a way of telling someone to "go outside," implying they're spending too much time online and it's affecting their wellbeing. They playfully hijacked those conversations across Twitter to redirect Canadians to their cause in real-time.
In order to ensure they were not contributing to the problem, they worked with a third-party to measure the full carbon emission impact of their marketing, from agency production to servers, cloud computing, and emissions from user devices, and they offset this by donating to carbon compensation projects and reforestation organizations to achieve carbon neutral advertising.
They developed an entirely new data signal to inform their campaign called Flora targeting. By working with environmentalists they mapped out the geographic barriers of specific flora, factoring in seasonality, to ensure the right native species were promoted to the right audiences across programmatic display, social and online video.
The “re:grow” platform acts as a social media platform for those supporting Canada’s biodiversity, factoring in geolocation, date, specific actions taken and visualizing the information through a map and social feed interface , which reveals insights about the “re:grow” movement’s collective impact.
With a modest media budget, “re:grow” demonstrated that Canadians were ready to take action to protect and restore nature and wildlife with a 90% increase in Web site traffic and over 1,500 actions taken and unique sign-ups at re:grow.ca.
The campaign had 7M total paid and earned impressions. Flora targeting drove a 150% increase in click-through engagement and an 800% return in unique interactions on Twitter sparking further conversations and positive actions plus exceeded frequency and reach KPIs on TikTok an OLV impression delivery of 105% and over 90% VCR showed Canadians were engaged and wanted to learn how to take action.
“re:grow” wasn’t intended to be an overnight solution to Canada’s biodiversity loss, but results suggest it helped inspire more Canadians to re:learn, re:plant and re:connect, and start on a path to
regenerate Canada together.
Credits
WWF CanadaMark Charles - Vice President, Marketing
Courtney Harrison - Senior Manager, Brand & Marketing
Cat Veitch - Specialist, Brand & Marketing
Initiative
Christian Kern - Director, Strategy
Mike Cortiula - Vice President, Client Advice & Management
Lucus Dato - Communications Designer
Performance Art
Ian Mackenzie - Chief Creative Officer
Jess Willis - Group Creative Director
Benjamin Playford - Creative Director
Sydney Gittens - Art Director
Leo Ding - Copywriter
Bradley Hodgkinson - Design Lead
Emily Plewes - Designer
Camila Lau - Designer
Brook Charlinski - Designer
Jason Kan - Video Editor
Paul Weeks - Photographer
Dani Reynolds - Stylist
Adora Beatty - Retoucher
Jordan Dinning - SVP, Managing Director
Andrea Barrett - Group Account Director
Nikhil Bijlani - Project Manager
Grayson Music
Nicholas Shaw - Audio Producer
Brian Bernard - Audio Engineer