Earth Day Campaign: 7 Ideas For Sustainable & Responsible Marketing
Earth Day is just around the corner. Brands are busy coming up with campaigns that talk about “going green” and “saving the planet”. Well, there are plenty of ideas to talk about Earth Day as a brand but how many of these ideas actually make a difference to your brand and to your audience? That’s the real question, isn’t it?
In this blog, we’ll talk about ideas for a responsible and authentic Earth Day campaign that goes beyond just “talking about the environment”. These are ideas that help you take a responsible step in favor of sustainability. Without further ado, let’s get started.
But first, is an Earth Day campaign worth your time?
Short answer: yes!
Customer sentiments are potent drivers of brand growth. And today customers feel strongly about brands that are more responsible and authentic in their marketing approach. They value brands that are sustainable. In fact, when trying new brands, about 45% of them are willing to go to environmentally responsible brands.
A survey by Statista found that about 82% of the surveyed people want brands to put people and the planet before profits.
All of these statistics point toward the fact that brands need to prioritize sustainability in every aspect of growth. Planning a responsible and meaningful Earth Day campaign is also part of the process.
A thoughtful Earth Day campaign brings a host of benefits with it:
- A sincere Earth Day campaign can be a good start for meaningful conversations with your customers.
- A creative Earth Day campaign that cuts through the noise can get your brand noticed by potential leads and increase your brand visibility. That’s especially when your campaign reaches people who share the same values.
- Through your Earth Day campaign, you can demonstrate your corporate social responsibility. An accurate representation of your brand’s approach can help shape your brand image.
- If you have recently moved toward a more sustainable approach for your brand like the use of eco-friendly packaging, for example, Earth Day would be a great time to highlight this.
- Finally, when you join the league of brands advertising on Earth Day, you are part of a global discussion. You grab eyeballs and gain media coverage which can add value to your business
With the benefits out of the way, let’s talk about the Earth Day campaign ideas that can attract these benefits.
Earth Day Campaign – 7 Tips + Ideas
We spoke about the need for a good Earth Day campaign. With those reasons in mind, you should also remember that your business processes and promotions that happen on the remaining 364 days of the year matter much more than what happens on Earth Day.
Brands that pay no heed to sustainability throughout the year or those that have non-eco-friendly practices are often axed to the ground for their pseudo-ethical steps.
Consumers can easily tell the difference between genuine environmentalism and shallow greenwashing efforts from brands. So, the Earth Day campaign should be a reflection of the overall brand values. Taking all these points into account let’s look at some tips to create these campaigns and some ideas based on campaigns from popular brands.
1. Pledge to stay away from greenwashing
Since we spoke about greenwashing just now, the below campaign is apt to start the list with.
A report from the European Commission says that about 42% of brands that claim to “go green” are not actually green in their approach. Wherefrom.org (rebranded to Really Good Culture in 2023) is a popular sustainability review platform. For Earth Day 2022, Wherefrom came up with a hilarious but thought-provoking video titled “Stop The Wash”.
The original track released with the campaign pointed out 120 greenwashing slogans that brands are popularly known to use close to Earth Day. This campaign called out brands that exaggerate their “green” approach or create shallow Earth Day campaigns without any intrinsic brand relevance.
Well, that’s not exactly the kind of campaign idea most brands can execute. But this campaign comes as a reminder to plan genuine campaigns that show that your brand does not just create “green slogans” but also makes efforts towards sustainability. That’s one of the first things to remember when you start planning your Earth Day campaign.
2. Collaborate with environment-focused non-profits
There are various non-profit organizations that strive for the conservation of the flora and fauna in various regions. Supporting such organizations that stand for the planet is a wonderful idea for Earth Day.
The below campaign from All Birds is a good example.
In this Earth Day campaign, All Birds contributed to the conservation-focused organization National Audobon Society which works to protect animals and birds.
Collaborations like these involve more than just creating a single ad creative. They are about genuine contributions and a lot of thought goes into creating them. Customers appreciate such efforts from brands.
Look for small environment groups in your state or locality, those that are striving with no aid. Collaborate with them on Earth Day and come up with a campaign idea that actually makes a difference to the organization.
Of course, one way to tie back to your brand will be to create a sale-related campaign like the one from All Birds. You can identify a relevant product from your portfolio and donate proceeds from the sales of that product within a particular period to the organization. In the process, your brand awareness and product awareness strengthen too.
Another option is to create a limited edition product representing the collaboration. Draw inspiration from the organization you are collaborating with and make subtle changes to an existing product.
Kimp Tip: If you do not have the budget to explore a whole new product line for Earth Day, you can always make small changes like tweaks to the packaging for example. The limited edition packaging can capture the essence of the collaboration and the purpose behind it.
And if you need help redesigning your packaging for your Earth Day campaign, get in touch with the Kimp team.
3. Collaborate with eco-influencers on social media
We live in times where collaborating with influencers can be much more beneficial to brands than brand partnerships. Because influencers have your target customers’ trust and working with them is one way to build their trust in your brand as well.
Eco-influencers belong to various niches. While some talk about veganism, others focus on clean beauty products. Some are about zero-waste lifestyle and others talk about ethical travel and tourism. As you can see, there’s ample variety here. Find someone who feels relevant to your industry and collaborate with them.
One way to find the right eco-influencer here is to identify someone with values that overlap with your brand values.
Again, as a part of this collaboration, similar to brand partnerships, you can have a limited edition product or social media contests, or even environment-themed challenges.
Giffgaff, a mobile virtual network operator, collaborated with eco-influencer Immy Lucas for Earth Day 2022. As a part of this collaboration, the brand came up with a blog post highlighting climate literacy.
As you can see, it does not take elaborate steps to actually make a difference during Earth Day. Something as simple as creating content that makes people stop and take a moment to think about environmental aspects or content that creates awareness about critical sustainability topics counts.
Need to come up with blog images for your Earth Day blogs or social media posts to talk about these campaigns on socials? One Kimp subscription covers it all.
4. Show rather than tell
As the saying goes, actions do speak a whole lot louder than words. So, rather than just creating an ad or a social media post for Earth Day, come up with an environment-friendly activity that involves your employees.
A few ideas for internal changes and activities that you can plan around Earth Day include:
- Put together a team and volunteer in an environment-focused activity like a local clean-up drive or a tree-planting drive.
- Choose one process that can be made more sustainable.
- Replace existing non-eco-friendly office supplies with greener alternatives, like eliminating single-use plastics on the campus.
- Switching to energy-efficient infrastructure in your office space.
Kimp Tip: For your Earth Day campaign to gain traction come up with creative ways to motivate better participation from your employees. This includes:
- Creating branded merchandise featuring the campaign theme
- Putting up posters in the common areas of your office
- Sending out emails to educate your employees about the campaign and to keep them updated about the details.
And one way to have all these designs created with a strong level of visual consistency and with a strong connection to your brand’s visual identity will be an unlimited design subscription.
5. Social media contests and giveaways
Like involving your employees in your Earth Day campaigns, involving your customers is also a great idea. And one way to do that is through social media contests and giveaways. These are great for customer engagement and community building as well.
The above photo contest, for example, aims to capture “climate change in Ghana”.
Similarly, narrow down on a relatable and easy topic rather than a broad and open-ended contest. This makes it easier for participating customers to understand the theme and take part in the contest.
A few ideas to make your Earth Day social media contest work include:
- Come up with a catchy and easy-to-remember name for the contest.
- Identify and fix a color palette to consistently use in all promotional materials.
- Create an easy hashtag and use it in all the posts related to the campaign. This also makes it easier for customers to take part in the contest by adding the hashtag and tagging your business page.
6. Support change
Involving your employees and involving your customers are great. But what’s even better is to support change and to encourage sustainability by promoting a paradigm shift.
As with other occasions, even for your Earth Day campaign, creativity earns your brownie points. Campaigns with thought-altering and behavior-altering effects benefit your brand and society. These are often the kind of campaigns that show people that you put people and the planet before profits for your business.
The below Earth Day campaign by the Palau Legacy Project is a good source of inspiration for creatively altering the thoughts and behaviors of the masses.
For this campaign, the Palau Legacy Project teamed up with branding agency Host/Havas and came up with a tourism campaign that not only encouraged environment-friendly behaviors but also rewarded them.
As a part of this campaign, visitors could turn environmentally-responsible tasks into virtual mobile currency and use it to unlock exclusive experiences. This makes even tough decisions like switching to eco-friendly practices and unlearning some practices easier and more exciting.
Kimp Tip: The Ol’au Palau campaign is a good example of the strengths of gamification in marketing. It helps in actively engaging customers and delivering a memorable experience. Experiences like these can have a strong positive impact on your brand in the long run.
7. Organize an event
Speaking of creating memorable experiences for customers, a well-planned event can help you achieve that more effectively.
We Don’t Have Time is an online community for like-minded people taking action to tackle climate change. The organization announced a 4-day long event leading up to Earth Day. The event allows both live offline participation and online virtual participation.
Event marketing is a timeless entity in marketing for businesses big and small. However, there has recently been a shift toward hybrid events that let audiences from all parts of the world take part. So, when you plan an event as a part of your Earth Day campaign, aim for creating a hybrid event that maximizes participation.
Kimp Tip: Irrespective of the objective of your event and its structure, good promotional activities ensure that the event fulfills its purpose. Your Earth Day campaign events are no exception. From a strong event logo to emails, social media posts, and web ads, a lot goes into promoting your events and these help your event gain momentum and reach a wider group of audience.
Confidently plan a responsible Earth Day campaign with Kimp
Visuals continue to be critical elements in all types of campaigns. There are over 6.57 million Tweets for #EarthDay. That’s the kind of competition you are up against. So, you need visually engaging content delivered in the most creative way to actually get noticed. Therefore, once you have your Earth Day campaign idea in place, work with your design team to create brand-relevant content that memorably captures the idea.
To streamline all of your promotional graphics for busy seasons like these, sign up for a Kimp subscription. Register now for a free 7-day trial.