Background

Hanwha has been operating the solar solution business since 2010 and has occupied the No.1 market share in the United States, UK, Germany, Japan, and South Korea. Nevertheless, because the solar solution business is B2B, the Hanwha brand is not well-known to the public as a solar solution provider. Since 2011, Hanwha has created a total of seven forests by only using solar energy in China, South Korea, and etc. However, campaign awareness remained low and there was also a lack of understanding of the difference between Hanwha's ultimate eco-friendly forestation way and the others’. Even in the COVID19 pandemic situation, to make more people aware solar solution business part of Hanwha and make them experience how the solar solution provides public benefit especially in terms of environment and sustainability, we decided to apply the concept of gamification to this campaign and created the world’s first sunlight-controlled mobile game.

Describe the strategy

Through this campaign, we wanted to inform the positive aspects of the solar solution business to more people beyond the existing Hanwha brand advocates and environmentally high involvement groups. Therefore, we have targeted not only Hanwha brand interest groups and environmental interest groups, but also game high involvement groups and plant interest groups. As a result, users who did not know much about Hanwha's solar solution business can naturally experience the impact of Hanwha's solar solution business on the Earth while playing this game. In addition, we intended not to deliver the brand’s message unilaterally through the voice of Hanwha, but instead tried to make the app go viral on social networks as a game itself with its special functions(the function of controlling the game with sunlight).

Describe the execution

Even though the game was developed for the Hanwha brand experience, the game itself must be entertaining for countless people to participate. So we designated the atmosphere of this game to provide a relaxing experience and created the interface by carefully curating the game assets like color, tone, design, background music with forest ASMR so that users can feel soothed. The Solar Forest app was released on World Environment Day(5th June) 2020. From the launch date to the present, it is steadily attracting participants. We promoted the app with Facebook, Instagram and YouTube bumper ads. Also, the 'Solar Forest’ app has won several game awards and app awards. The unique play of utilizing sunlight became viral in social media, creating viral-loops that inspire new downloads. While people couldn't go out and plant trees due to the pandemic, the Solar Forest has become a new opportunity to make up for it.

List the results

1. Compared to last year, campaign participants increased by 821% 2. Ranked #1 Free Game of App Store 3. Top24 at Made with Unity Award 2020 4. Won at iEco Awards 2020 5. 99% positive sentiments of the campaign across social 6. Used as environmental education material for students 7. The number of trees donated in the game continues to increase actively at this moment (About 10,000 virtual trees were donated as of 23rd December 2020). Hanwha plans to reflect the number of donated virtual trees to the size of the actual forest, they will plant in March 2021. 8. Introduced at the Sustainable-Development-Goals FORUM 2020 and Unity-for-Humanity Summit 2020 as a best practice. 9. The game served as an opportunity to rekindle the public’s awareness of environmental problems overshadowed by the pandemic. 10. The game enhanced Hanwha’s brand activism as the world-leading solar solution provider responding to the climate-change.