On the weekend Seth Godin said “The art of marketing is not finding more money to do more marketing. It’s figuring out how to tell a story that spreads with the resources you’ve got”, in doing so he unwittingly summed up the Second Chance Trees American Express Members Project campaign.
Our goal here was to utilize social media to raise awareness (and votes) for the Second Chance Trees project. The tricky part: no budget and virtually no time.
After a week of online chatter, the results look like this:
- The Second Chance Trees machinima video has risen to the top of 4,120,000 Google search results for the term ‘American Express Members project‘, while a related image in the Converseon Flickr account ranks third.
- CNN featured the project prominently with their Future Summit program
- The machinima video has been viewed over 2,600 times and received six ‘5 star’ ratings on YouTube
- There have been over 100 blog posts referencing Second Chance Trees, including leading Second Life, Environmental, PR/Marketing and SEO blogs
- Second Chance Trees Island has had its most successful week to date, with the planting of over 140 endangered rainforest trees
When reviewing those figures, it’s important remember that this all happened in 7 days on a shoestring budget.
Unfortunately, despite all the buzz we fell short of recording enough votes to make the final 25. However, the similarly titled ‘One Million Trees – Global Reforestation’ project gained several hundred votes over the past week. While some of those may have been confused by the difficult voting process at the American Express site, it’s good to see an identical reforestation effort (even without the innovative educational experience offered by Second Life) moving forward on the back of popular opinion.
To all our supporters who voted, blogged, commented, viewed or planted – thank you very much for taking the time to support a good social media cause. While we might no longer be in the running for the $5 million American Express Members Project, we are committed to the Second Chance Trees project for the long term and we’ll continue to look for corporate sponsors and other methods to expand the projects influence.
Be sure to continue to support your favorite American Express Members Project!
