GCS Campaign Showcase: ‘Put Down Roots’ woodland creation campaign

Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA)?

Encouraging woodland creation?

The government has pledged to deliver 30,000 hectares (equivalent to 30,000 rugby pitches) of woodland creation per year across the UK by the end of this Parliament. With such ambitious targets, there is a need for communications to help spread the word about this initiative and the grants that are available.?

The ‘Put Down Roots’ campaign was launched to reach audiences who would be most likely to help tree planting rates. Through targeted paid-for communications to private landowners and land managers (including farmers), the campaign aimed to:

• build understanding of the importance and benefits of woodland creation and raise awareness of financial incentives
• raise awareness of the support available to plant and maintain trees
• encourage take-up of grants/support, directing traffic to a campaign webpage and signposting to further information on GOV.UK.

Targeting landowners

The creative strategy and channel selection were informed by insight into the target audience’s motivations, barriers to action and channel preferences.?

Insight steered us towards a creative proposition that centred on:

• a clear financial offer which appealed to farmers, using the ￡10k per hectare England Woodland Creation Offer (EWCO) grant as the flagship offer to simplify a complex grant landscape?
• a ‘legacy’ message to appeal to farmers’ views of themselves as stewards of the land, and their sense of responsibility for future generations
• free expert guidance available from the Forestry Commission, to reassure farmers that they don't need to be experts in tree planting – there is support available.

Our main call to action was to visit the campaign webpage for more information on available grants and support. To do this, we used a number of paid channels, including:?

• social media adverts on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn
• paid search on Google and Bing?
• regional radio advertising
• podcast sponsorship
• media partnerships with Farmers Weekly and Farmers Guardian.?

All digital channels were highly targeted to a farmer and landowner audience, with regional radio avoiding urban areas and large conurbations. The launch was supported by a Defra-led press notice, as well as a suite of social content that was supported and amplified by delivery partners.

Campaign successes

Results from post-campaign tracking proved that the campaign was successful in raising awareness of the benefits of woodland creation, and of the England Woodland Creation Offer (EWCO).

As this is only the first phase of the campaign, and the campaign was only in active delivery for two months, we saw excellent results for such a short time frame. By the end of the campaign, 74% of survey respondents had heard of the EWCO grant, an increase of 19% on the pre-campaign survey (55%).

The campaign exceeded performance benchmarks and targets across all communication channels. Highlights from the campaign include:?

• 22.9 million digital impressions?
• 38 thousand views of the campaign webpage
• a 130% increase in EWCO page visits on GOV.UK
• a 33.5% average open rate of emails sent from media partner, Farmers Guardian.

We are confident that this campaign is increasing awareness of woodland creation, another example of communications supporting the government's target of reaching net zero by 2050.?

Learnings from the campaign:?the importance of insight

Results from post-campaign tracking show that recall of the campaign visuals and messages was high.

This indicates that the channel selection and creative concept worked together to achieve cut through with the target audience, demonstrating the importance of designing a campaign based on robust insight into audience motivations and barriers.?

Audience insight steered us to develop:

• a creative proposition that led with a clear, tangible financial offer to appeal to farmers’ pragmatic interests
• an emotional ‘legacy’ message which appealed to farmers’ sense of responsibility as stewards of the land.

In post-campaign tracking, we saw:

• 68% recall of the lead financial message
• 33% recall of the legacy message.

Insight also identified radio as a primary communication channel – a channel which often has high wastage, but which drove 32% recall among the target audience.

The team who worked on the campaign?

Well done to the fantastic team who worked on this campaign. You can find them on Linkedin at:?

Hannah Leitch?

Adam Wright?

Oliver Finlay-Smith

Charlotte Armitage?

Hannah Millbank?

Nicola Espindola

This is part of GCS's Campaign Showcase blog series. If you have a campaign you would like us to showcase, contact [email protected]