#PledgeForThePlanet

Social Media Marketing to Create Social Change

The Challenge

A growing body of evidence shows positive motivation is more effective than negative motivation. We needed to help Global Footprint create a concept and execute on a plan to help reframe the way people relate to climate change, so they can see it as a problem with positive, actionable steps for reversal, rather than an insurmountable, inevitable future of doom.

The Goals

• Move people from awareness to action necessary to reverse the dangers facing our planet from overfishing
• Overcome the overwhelming message of fear that has been told over the last decade

Solution

The first step was a collaborative strategy workshop to define the campaign objective and target audience: people worldwide with interests in environment, sustainability, energy, consciousness, biodiversity, nature, outdoors, future generations, stewardship and social justice.

Once we identified our target market, we used our in-house tool, the emotigraphic™ profile process, to determine key messages to create actions and solutions. The concept that rose to the top was a “Pledge for the Planet” campaign that gave each audience type a single action they could take (and share!) to create and inspire change.

The pledges included:

• “Lower your household energy consumption” and share a selfie
• “Host a vegetarian dinner party,” tweeted about by environmental advocate, entrepreneur and business icon Sir Richard Branson

Results

Thousands of participants made pledges and the campaign attracted social media support from a new cast of supporters, including:

• Chelsea Clinton
• The UPS Foundation
• Chief Sustainability Officer of Tiffany & Co.

The hashtag #PledgeforthePlanet has caught on and is still used regularly on Instagram and Twitter. Check out some of our #pledgefortheplanet photo winners from around the world!