Last November, The Nature Conservancy (TNC) put together an effort on the fly to encourage environmentally friendly holiday gifts (see Green Christmas post). Dubbed Green Gift Monday, the grassroots effort sought to create a guerilla consumer movement on Cyber Monday that encourages environmentally sound holidayshopping. Encouraged by the initial marketplace reaction, TNC has decided to extend and expand the program into 2011.
Launched two weeks before Cyber Monday, TNC generated support from over 65+ blogs, nonprofits, and eco-retailers participate. There were 900 uses of the hashtag #GGM2010 and an additional 500 mentions of the phrase “Green Gift Monday” in the social media space. TNC had its #2 traffic day on its blog, Cool Green Science (the number one day dealt with the Gulf oil spill).
Now that attention and interest are apparent, the Nature Conservancy will expand the program for 2010. The organization has proof of concept to offer potential Green Gift Monday partners, and hopefully turn it into a consumer movement.
“This year was our test run – now we have results to share with potential partners,” said Amy Ganderson, Associate Director, Digital Marketing at The Nature Conservancy. “Like most campaigns, people like to see who else is involved before they jump on board. So for next year, we’re in a better position to start earlier and make it even bigger.”
The organization will likely extend its grassroots activities to Facebook event, a live Twitter chat, and other tactics. But most important for TNC is moving beyond awareness to demonstrate true results to the marketplace.
“Tactics are easy wins for us, but the real question is how can we quantify our collective efforts to give green,” asked Ganderson. “Do we launch a petition, can we quantify how much revenue is driven to our partners from the event, that’s the direction we need to go in to show that we’re truly making a difference with Green Gift Monday.”
Congratulations to TNC for moving the ball forward with Green Gift Monday!
Geoff Livingston is a frequent contributor to the Rare Planet blog Adventures in Conservation.