Timberland Earthkeepers

Context Optional was tasked with developing a social media strategy to drive awareness for Timberland’s Earthkeepers initiative, a project to plant real trees in deforested regions of the world. No additional promotional budget was available to support the campaign, so growth had to rely on grassroots efforts and travel through word-of-mouth.

In response, Context selected Facebook due to its strong communications channels and propensity for viral spread, particularly for social and environmental causes.  Context Optional then designed a custom application for Timberland featuring a virtual forest where users send seeds to friends and can grow those seeds into one of four varieties of trees using a virtual watering can.

To further enhance viral spread, Context Optional allowed users to dedicate their trees to causes, friends, and loved ones.  Users are also able to see all the other Earthkeeper users who watered their tree, allowing them to form community using Facebook as communication platform for social impact.

Earthkeepers is a network of people that motivates change – hoping that small steps can make a difference in the way people behave across a global community. Through this Facebook application, Earthkeepers connected with people dedicated to change.

Relying exclusively on viral growth through users’ friends, over 100 thousand users sent 1.75 million seeds to friends in the 4 months after launch of the Earthkeepers campaign. Timberland was thrilled that the message could spread through a community so quickly, with users watering the trees millions of times and growing 325 thousand virtual trees to full size by September 2008 and continuing to this day.

Through Timberland’s partnership with Green Net, the Earthkeepers Facebook application has planted over 325 thousand real trees in the Horqin desert of northern China.

Moreover, with the application’s built-in communication channels passionate users self-organized Facebook events to gather from around the world in the virtual forest to simultaneously water seeds on behalf of the Earthkeepers community.

URL: http://apps.facebook.com/earthkeepers/