Keeping up with the article Ben wrote for the Contagious newsletter two weeks ago, I’ve run innocent smoothie’s “Buy One Grow One” campaign through KUDOS and given it the scorecard below. Consumers can purchase a specially-marked carton of an innocent smoothie and enter the unique code onto the campaign web site — for each code entered, innocent will plant a tree in rural Africa or India on the consumer’s behalf. Participants can keep track of their trees online, and share their progress with widgets and badges.
After spending four months in the UK (but back home now — sniff sniff), I’ve come to really like the innocent smoothie brand (never did see one of their grass vans, though). Their Buy One Grow One campaign is fairly standard in terms of the concept (buy our product and we’ll donate on your behalf), but innocent leverages this project by truly engaging their consumers through the social media-heavy web site. The campaign is especially Desirable to both innocent and its audience. For innocent, they’re gaining more foot soldiers to deliver against their corporate mission; to be an environmentally friendly company that works to better the world they live and work in. For the audience, the project fulfills their desires to make a tangible difference in the world by letting them take action but then importantly to keep track of how many trees they’ve planted, and actually see them as part of a “virtual forest” on the Buy One Grow One web site.
The campaign lost points on their Knowledge and Openness for the campaign. While they provide info on how and where they’re planting trees, and innocent’s general commitment to sustainability, there’s no real knowledge being shared that says why a smoothie company has chosen to plant trees in these specific communities and how this is the best way for their consumers to be involved. In hand with this is the fact that this campaign lacks Openness for the audience. While it’s clear this is a marketing tool for innocent, participants can only get involved on innocent’s terms. There is no campaign-specific blog, no way for those who planted trees to interact (like a group or forum), or a way to give feedback to innocent aside from their general customer service email.
All in all, I gave the campaign a 37/50. See the Contagious newsletter for more, or see below for the full KUDOS scorecard.
