Zero Waste Box
In 2021 I created a social media campaign dedicated to Plastic Free July on ZeroWasteBox’s Instagram channel. Below are the staged in-feed images, story images, captions, and hashtag blocks of this campaign.
Plastic Free July is an organization dedicated to reducing single plastic use and waste globally. Zero Waste Box, one of TerraCycle’s offerings, is specifically designed to recycle products that are conventionally un-recyclable by allowing users to ship in their waste.
Beyond research of Plastic Free July, Terracycle and the plastic free lifestyle, another key component in the creation of this campaign was the Zero Waste Box audience. ZWB followers are mostly women ages 25-34. This demographic is busy, on the go. They are exposed to even more media than the average individual. In order for this campaign to be successful, the content needed to be something a user could look at for 5 seconds, and already have gained something from it.
Moreover, these pieces needed to pop. In a world of thousands of images, words, billboards, ads, videos constantly surrounding us, in order for something to catch someone's eye it needs to be pretty special. The ZWB brand image is young and fun. This campaign took it a step further. Infographic style content that can be shared to stories was the mindset of each piece. ZWB PFJ needed to be story worthy!
In the 10 posts, and two story series of Plastic Free July, we were able to gather great numbers of impressions and shares for the ZWB instagram, the ultimate goal. The. average number of saves from each post went from less than 6 to over 7!
This is the beginning of the ZWB PFJ campaign! Continue on for the rest of the content.
Fan Favorites
Below are the three top performers from ZWB’s Plastic Free July Campaign. While they may all seem very different the one thing each post had in common was a way of making users feel connected.
ZeroWasteBox users saw Plastic Free July as a way to join an international movement, to be a part of something bigger than themselves, no matter their background.
5 Tips to Avoid Wishcycling allowed users to see new ways for them to get involved, to educate themselves without completely changing their lifestyles. This was our most shared post.
The Flip Flop ZWB featuring beachy scenery and footprints in the sand showed the audience a happy place, somewhere they were familiar with, and somewhere they are sad to see being littered with waste.
TC X ZWB Audience
Two of our most successful posts were strikingly similar to two of Terracycle's most recent successful posts. This could be credited to the overlap in the audience, but could also speak to what is relative to their users in general.
The first is the beach scenery "No Butts About It" post shouting out Terracycle's cigarette butt recycling program, which looked very similar to the Flip Flop ZWB post. A possible insight is that for both Terracycle and ZeroWasteBox customers and followers, the beach means something more than just sand and water, that it is a place of peace and happiness that they are sad to see being harmed.
Second is the "Let's Restore Our Earth" post featuring a cartoon earth with smaller individuals around the world putting the pieces back together, an extremely similar layout to the kickoff post. Whether this has something to do with the idea of joining an international cause, or is a call to people from all the world, no matter their background coming together and uniting as one, this style simply works.
Recommendations
The most apparent insight from the performance of individual posts were the tendency for individuals to navigate towards the beach scenery and earth graphics.
This style works for not only the ZeroWasteBox audience, but the Terracycle audience as well, potentially showing its universal appeal.
The informational posts like “5 Tips to Avoid Wishcycling” far outperformed story-based content.
People like seeing content that they can share to their stories and add to their “Save The Earth” highlight reels This infographic style content was just that, being the most shared of the campaign.
A connection between the content and the ZWB audience must be obvious in the future. The ZWB audience shouldn’t be wondering why content is relevant to them, or worse why it’s popping up on their feed. Posts like the Flip Flop ZWB made that connection extremely obvious and their performance proves it.