This year’s theme for Earth Day was Trees for the Earth; an ideal platform to highlight how almond trees and the farmers who grow them are an important part of achieving a cleaner, healthier and more sustainable planet because they help combat climate change, clean the air and help local communities.
ABC built a week long “Earth Week” social media campaign on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and deployed the Digital Truth Team arm of the Almond Ambassador Program to drive awareness of all things almond and sustainability. A blog post, “Earth Day 2016 Celebrates Trees for the Earth” kicked off the campaign.
Using hashtag #Nuts4Trees and daily posts, the campaign encouraged consumers to take action and share how nuts they were for Earth Day. Results from Facebook show that our campaign was one of the most successful ABC social campaigns in recent years, with over 141 comments over the week long promotion. And on Instagram, one of the Earth Day posts became the second most liked and engaged posts on the platform (132 engagements) in ABC history, next to the April Fool’s post (154 engagements).
In summary, impressions totaled more than 867,000 and garnered 201,000 engagements. What does this mean? The campaign resulted in increased comments, sharing and interactions with ABC’s social media posts, compared to a typical week where we receive about 19,600 impressions and engage 585 people. It also helped to spread consumer awareness of the California almond community’s commitment to efficiency and sustainability – an important message to share in light of recent criticism of the industry’s role in California.
In addition, the California Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics (CAND) annual meeting was held on Earth Day and ABC staff brought the message above to that audience as well. Speakers Alissa Kendall of the UC Davis Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Danielle Veenstra, Senior Specialist, Agricultural and Environmental Affairs and Jenny Heap, Manager Global Health & Nutrition Communications Manager, gave a presentation titled, “Behind the Headlines: A Closer Look at the Impact of Drought on California Crops” to registered dietitian nutritionists which overview of this critical issue. It also discussed what the California almond community is doing to manage water responsibly and efficiently. Registered dietitian nutritionists are an important audience for ABC as they are on the front lines answering patient, consumer and media questions about food and nutrition; impacting consumer shopping and eating habits.
