Reframing Advocacy as a Lifestyle Choice
Rainforest Alliance
The Rainforest Alliance (RA) is a New York-based, international non-profit organization dedicated to ensuring sustainability by reshaping land use practices and consumer behavior. We were engaged to infuse new life into the RA’s annual “Follow the Frog” campaign. The global campaign encourages consumers to support a healthy planet by looking for RA’s frog seal when they shop and travel.
The Situation
Previous years’ campaigns had seen short-lived success—a burst of activity around a campaign video—and audience engagement was limited to core environmentalists. The task was to engage new audiences with a campaign that felt fresh and personal.
Our research revealed that the “do good” messages of the past were no longer effective. Instead of pushing the slogan itself, we considered how to highlight the individual’s role in everyday advocacy and portray it as a lifestyle choice. The creative insight? Reframe the traditional advocacy approach to align directly with consumer behavior. These consumers were already leaders, so what if we turned the idea of “following” on its head and reframed it as the most proactive, pioneering way to be? “I’m a Follower” was born.
The Solution
The “I’m a Follower” campaign concepts juxtaposed the slogan with visuals of powerful and independent characters, creating a surprising and fun creative tension. The campaign played out through a series of executions and characters that resonated with diverse audiences worldwide, and was designed to translate across media and audience types, corporate and non-profit partners and specific markets. Campaign touchpoints included experiential events, in-store and online promotions, and a celebrity social media activation touching consumers across the globe.
“I’m a Follower” was RA’ s most successful consumer campaign to date. More than fifty companies, including McDonald’s, Lipton and CLIF Bar, Domtar/Staples, Green Mountain/Timothy’s Coffee, as well as major celebrities, participated. Consumers from over forty countries engaged and social media activity increased 50% over the previous year. A Union Square activation event, which we conceptualized and produced, attracted over 1,500 attendees and garnered hundreds of campaign pledges.
