PLANT SPIKE

TitlePLANT SPIKE
BrandWWF
Product / ServiceEARTH HOUR CAMPAIGN
CategoryA05. Alternative Media
EntrantWUNDERMAN Sydney, AUSTRALIA
Entrant Company:WUNDERMAN Sydney, AUSTRALIA
DM/Advertising Agency:WUNDERMAN Sydney, AUSTRALIA

Credits

Credits

Name Company Position
Matt Batten Wunderman Creative Director
Jason Stubbs Wunderman Head of Copy
Theodora Gerakiteys Wunderman Copywriter
Paolo Meucci Wunderman Art Director
Paul Hayes Wunderman Producer
Jo Durant Wunderman Account Manager
Will Morgan Wunderman Account Manager
Sam Brodie WWF – Earth Hour Director
TPR Group Distribution
STi Lilyfield Printer

The Brief

WWF's annual global Earth Hour campaign asks households and businesses to turn off lights to raise awareness of climate change. Most of the campaign is targeted to individuals. We had to find a way to target many diverse businesses spread across Australia to encourage them to participate in Earth Hour and visit the URL to find out how they can help the environment.

Creative Execution

We created several world firsts. • We invented a printer ink that contained organic fertiliser, so the spike would actually feed the plant with a healthy dose of nutrients as it biodegraded naturally in the soil. The Plant Spike was also printed on FSC-certified paper (controlled and managed sources and recycled fibre) to maintain environmental credentials. • We discovered a brand new marketing medium by using office pot plants to advertise. • We created a brand new distribution channel to get past the gatekeeper and inside businesses nationwide (5,000 spikes were distributed to 1,500 business across Australia).

Describe the creative solution to the brief/objective.

Our strategy was to partner with a company who already had existing logistics that gets them inside many different businesses in several cities. Across the country, thousands of businesses hire pot plants to decorate their offices. The plant hire companies service these plants on regular rounds. And the plants would make a perfect vehicle for our ‘green’ message. We engaged TPR Group, Australia’s leading plant hire company, to distribute our communications as they did their rounds tending office plants nationwide. Naturally, whatever we created would have to be environmentally-friendly, but we wanted to be better than carbon-neutral.

Results

With WWF’s Earth Hour now being a global brand, a standardised call-to-action must be used across all marketing communications, making it is impossible to determine a response directly attributable to any single piece. However, Earth Hour 2010 was a success and anecdotal feedback on the Plant Spike was incredibly positive. Post-campaign inquiries showed that businesses targeted by our distribution channel loved the Plant Spike and were indeed encouraged to participate in Earth Hour 2010. The Plant Spike also featured on blogs from around the world, further spreading the environmental message and the Earth Hour call-to-action.