Background

Hanwha has been operating the solar solution business since 2010 and has occupied the No.1 market share in the US, 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 as a CSR program by only using solar energy in China, South Korea, 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 COVID-19 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 creative idea

To allow people to engage in tree planting while practicing social distancing, we decided to implement the whole process of tree planting outdoor to mobile devices and release the campaign digitally. Also, Hanwha's Forest has a distinctive characteristic that it does not emit carbon at all because it grows young trees only with solar energy. As we need to convey this important characteristic in more acceptable way, we decided to apply the concept of gamification. To enable easy, enjoyable, and persistent participation in the campaign, we developed a mobile game app: ‘Solar Forest’. This digital tree-planting game utilizes a light sensor to grow virtual trees with natural light shined on the device and allow fully grown trees to be donated to the real forest.

Describe the strategy

There are three key strategic ideas for this game. First, by planting the virtual trees powered by sunlight shined through windows and balconies, people can directly participate in the campaign while still preventing the local society’s spread of infections. Also, existing offline tree-planting campaigns had limitations in the number of participants but this game allows numerous people from all ages wherever they are to engage and contribute. Second, regarding the audience, our goal was conveying the positive aspects of Hanwha’s forestation campaign 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 environment-interest groups, but also game-high-involvement groups and plant-interest groups. Third, instead of delivering the information unilaterally, the ‘Solar Forest’ game invites players to personally engage in the content, effectively conveying the Hanwha brand philosophy and brand activism which response to the climate-crisis by eco-friendly forestation.

Describe the execution

1)Prototyping: With the concept of ‘growing seedlings with sunlight’, we quickly started prototyping. Since the factor of sunlight was the most important thing, we first checked if the sunlight can be checked with smartphones and how accurately it can be calculated. 2)Game Planning & UI/UX Design: We built the game frameworks that "Flower Pot" stage of growing trees using sunlight, decorating "Personal Garden" with the grown trees, and donating "Personal Garden" to "Collective Forest". 3)Graphic Design: Several design concepts were tested to convey a familiar tone and mood for all age users. By testing different shaders and universal render pipelines, we got the overall design concept. Then, we started to design the element characters, plants, gardens and vertical forest. 4)Development & Test : continuous development processes and tests were conducted to improve game ability, game balance, and UI/UX. 6)Launch: Officially launched on World Environment Day(June 5th) 2020

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.