Journal
A Grassroots Campaign for "Homemade, All Natural Preserves"
by Jen Pennington
Over the summer, I sat down on a Saturday afternoon with my client, Danielle at the Whidbey Camano Land Trust, and I listened as she lamented about their low visibility at local farmer’s markets. The Land Trust is involved in protecting the Islands’ most important natural habitats, scenic vistas, and working farms and forests in partnership with landowners and our island communities. This was their 25th year and she wanted people to take notice. Danielle told me people would often walk by their booth and try not to make eye contact. They thought all the Land Trust wanted was donations. I told her what she needed was a hook: something that would attract as much attention as if they were selling fresh baked chocolate chip cookies. Then we started play the, “What if?” game.
I said to her, what if you had a preserve jar filled with different soil samples from the different lands you preserved? Pine needles and soils from this place, beach sand and shells from over here, etc. And what if we named the preserves somehow. We brainstormed back and forth for a couple of hours through a completely ridiculous idea and we kept bringing it back to something they could do themselves. Something really grassroots. It would be a homemade campaign. No it would it would be a homemade preserves campaign with mason jars. I was so excited by the project, two days later I sent her one comp and the two of us were like little kids batting it back and forth and finessing it. We would call it the 25 Years of Homemade, All Natural Preserves campaign. On the bottom of a label we would list the contents by the number of acres that had been acquired in the past 25 years, and the types of land that had been saved. We worked furiously to use it wherever we could. It even made the cover of a local island events paper.
At first it cost the Land Trust some preserve jars, some labels and some time to fill them. We printed minimally at first. Just a few label prints for the jars, then an invitation and RSVP card to their big 25 year celebration, then a poster, then some t-shirts and fliers. It was a success. People took notice and in Danielle’s words, “It was a hit! We integrated the design into all of our activities for the later part of the year, culminating in an evening gala in October. That final event was our true sign of the campaign’s success when nearly 400 people showed up to celebrate with us!”
Now really does it get any better than that?
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