india, brazil, kenya, nepal, madagascar, cameroon, mozambique, west papua brand and marketing2018-2020TreeSisters - Tropical Reforestation
[ OVERVIEW ]For two years, I worked with TreeSisters as Marketing Manager and Head of Marketing and Branding. TreeSisters is a reforestation and women’s empowerment charity on a mission to help human beings restore our relationship with nature. During my time with the team, I led global campaigns, digital product collaboration and strategic corporate relationships that funded the planting of over seven million trees in two years. I managed marketing across creative, digital, and community functions to build segmented email engagement for an audience of over 45,000 subscribers and a social audience of over 250,000 followers. This role balanced strategic vision with execution to create joy and momentum, turning behavioral insights into sustained engagement and climate action.
Case Study Details - TreeSisters
Goal
Embed reforestation into everyday life
Activities
Campaigns, Events, Partnerships
Funded 7 Million Trees in 2 Years
Results
[ HIGHLIGHTS ]Reforestation Revolution
Strategic Narrative
TreeSisters exists to shift humanity from a consumer to restorer species. As Head of Marketing, I led the development and delivery of campaigns such partnering with major global brands. On an individual level, the “Grow Your Own Forest” campaign was one of our most impactful, inviting donors to embed restoration into daily life.
Storytelling
Our message reframed climate action from daunting to empowering, positioning it as something everyone could participate in through monthly giving, periodic contributions, or volunteerim. By blending behavioral, and ecological narratives, we connected personal action to planetary impact on a large scale.
Impact and Success
Through strategic storytelling, campaign leadership, and multi-sector partnerships, our team at TreeSisters mobilized a global movement that funded the planting of seven million trees across critical tropical ecosystems in just two years - delivering lasting benefits for climate, biodiversity, and diverse communities. On a personal level, many women in our community also found deep solidarity and transformation through our women’s empowerment resources.
Tropical Superpower
Our work focused on reforestation partners across the tropical belt because of the shorter growing seasons, and vast biodiversity restoration potential. During the time I was there, we had projects in Brazil, India, Kenya, Cameroon, Nepal, Madagascar, and launched projects in Amazonia (first Indigenous-led project), West Papua and Mozambique.
Selected Projects
Launching Planting Projects in Amazonia, Mozambique and West Papua
In 2019, TreeSisters embarked on the journey of starting three new planting projects. Already planting across the tropical belt around the world, specifically in India, Nepal, Madagascar, Kenya, Cameroon and Brazil, the new planting projects launched would be in West Papua, Mozambique, and Amazonia. To communicate this to our audience meant designing and developing a strategy around education and engagement with the various projects, particularly with key pieces of information, such as planting goals, stories of the people directly benefiting from the projects, and the larger charity strategic goals being achieved.
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In announcing the Amazonia Planting Project, we were very excited to share about the first indigenous-led planting project to be supported in the TreeSisters planting portfolio - a ‘forest garden’ in the Amazonian Basin developed by the Ashaninka tribe and working with planting partner organisation Aquaverde. The Ashaninka have a long history of resistance. Originally from Peru, they pre-date the Inca empire, which sought to conquer the Amazon forests and their inhabitants. They fought against the Spanish conquistadors and the incursions into their land from non-indigenous who came for the rubber boom.
At the time, the goal was to plant 50,000 native fruit producing trees of ten species from 2020 to 2022. This was dependent on whether the Ashaninka succeeded in acquiring more land, as it would be needed to keep up with their plan to plant 10 million agroforestry trees over 10 years.
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Eden Reforestation Projects, a TreeSisters planting partner organisation, set up a mangrove planting project in Mozambique. The program began in October 2018 with the Katembe and Madjuva planting sites near Maputo, where prior to which Eden had planted over 550 thousand mangroves on these two sites.
TreeSisters was very pleased to announce the tree partnership in Mozambique with Eden Reforestation Projects, starting the first years with the restoration of a new site which was severely deforested - ‘Bela Vista’ village. 25 people (at least 70% women) were employed to plant 750,000 trees per year, including at least 10% agroforestry trees as alternatives to mangrove timber extraction.
Mozambique’s naturally occurring mangroves were historically decimated by deforestation for charcoal and salt production. During the civil war from 1977 to 1992, mangroves near Maputo were burnt to prevent rebels from hiding and hindered the Government’s ability to spend on mangrove protection. Today, the mangroves of Maputo are under higher pressure from uncontrolled coastal migrations, an into agriculture lands.
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The West Papua Planting Project was also undertaken with Eden Reforestation Projects, to help the village of Ansas replace mangroves lost in its vicinity. The project addressed mangrove restoration and poverty; over time, healthy mangrove forests provided an abundance of life and fisheries resources. The Ansas community would in time be able to build a different relationship with their mangroves, improve their livelihoods, and plan a better future. A minimum of 500,000 mangrove trees were intended to be planted the first year. The project would also be planting at least 10% agroforestry trees (5) beginning in the second year, to take the pressure off the mangroves.
Pukka and TreeSisters: business as a force of nature
For charities focused on climate change initiatives, corporate partnerships are crucial. When I worked with TreeSisters, our first major corporate partnership was a strategic campaign and initiative with Pukka Herbal Tea, at the time part of the Unilever portfolio of brands, now part of Lipton Teas and Infusions. Some corporations are larger than many economies in the world, and as such the responsibility of commerce is greater than ever. As change and uncertainty define so much of the global economic landscape, organisations must adapt to changing conditions at scale while re-orienting toward their deeper values - as well as the values of society as a whole.
Ultimately, this multi-year partnership led to well over 750,000 trees planted, as well as continued collaboration on carbon credit balance, and more nuanced sustainability goal-setting.
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In 2018 TreeSisters started a relationship with Pukka Herbal Tea, at first with a campaign for making Black Friday Green by planting a tree for every online purchase over the Black Friday to Cyber Monday weekend. The campaign was incredibly successful, and led to a deepening of the relationship. In 2019, Pukka released an even more ambitious campaign, rolling out their funding of tree planting to all products, in the Unleash Your Power Within campaign.
For both of these campaigns I liaised with the Pukka Marketing Team by representing the TreeSisters brand as design advisory, as well as producing press release materials on behalf of the TreeSisters brand. Pukka Herbs is truly business as a force of nature, and is hopefully one of many many more to take the lead in their sector.
It is essential for our daily activities to be embedded with restoration; Pukka is proof that this can be done thoughtfully and effectively. The challenge that presents itself to us is that our everyday lives are in many ways, exactly the opposite, and our world has normalised taking from nature constantly.
If we reframe everyday actions as acts of reciprocity for the planet, we unleash the power of us all.
Understanding how corporate donations drive reforestation results at meaningful scale.
Understanding Reforestation Funding
How can organisations actively participate in creating a better world for all, while retaining or even increasing profit? There are a variety of approaches that can be taken. In order to work closely with a variety of organisations, TreeSisters worked with a customised and relationship-based approach.
The infographic at left illustrates the use of funds, typically a conversation starter, and why it is so crucial to have this synergistic approach.
Community Awareness
Mass awareness and encouraging communities to take responsibility for climate change mitigation are much needed in order to create the conditions for large scale restoration.
One of the ways that businesses partner with charities is by transaction - for example Pukka Herbs collaboration with TreeSisters. Pukka have committed to planting a tree for every product sold, and have made an enduring impact.
Embedding Restoration into Everyday Life - the Grow Your Own Forest Campaign
One of the more daunting aspects of climate change is the sheer immensity of it - but is that aspect daunting or empowering? In a sense, it means that everyone has a collective responsibility to be a part of the solution, everyone has the opportunity to save what has been lost.
From a storytelling perspective, the TreeSisters brand sought to convey a balance of communications around women’s empowerment and ecological restoration. To do this coherently for our audiences, our Marketing Team would often need to separate these initiatives or prioritise one set of messaging over another to remain clear to our audience.
One core message was always repeatedly driven home though, which is to spread the concept of making human beings “restorers” rather than “consumers”.
From a campaign perspective, the “Grow Your Own Forest” concept was intended as a seamless solution for both the everyday restorer and the corporate partner; the small business or the donor. The social media and digital materials had a footprint of over one million unique users.
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The approach of balancing behavioural and ecological pathways was a difficult one to convey with one message; however it became the overarching theme of our campaigns and communications. It came to life through the charity’s focus specifically on tropical reforestation and women’s empowerment, and was a process of discovering how to engage, nourish, inspire and activate women on behalf of empowering themselves, each other and forests.
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Imagine if everyone took personal responsibility and agency around climate change, and grew their own forest. Imagine if it were normal to give back to the planet as it currently is to take from it.
Millions of trees would planted per year, replenishing so many that have been deforested in the past few decades alone.
This was the core messaging around our Grow Your Own Forest campaign in 2019 - a call to restore, to learn, to share about your own forest. It meant not only funding at every level, but also getting to know the species, communities and ecosystems that benefit from your donation - truly growing and knowing your very own forest.
When we understand these forests and ecosystems that we fund, they change us too - we learn to love, to restore, to replenish. We learn how destructive our relationship to nature has been in the past, and how possible it is to heal that relationship when it comes from a place of respect and care.
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Boomtown and TreeSisters: Music Growing Forests
One of the biggest festivals in the world decided to grow a legacy forest with TreeSisters. In the Summer of 2019, Boomtown Fair harnessed the power of joy and music to give back an incredible gift to the world and its future - a legacy forest with one tree for everyone who attended the festival. Over the course of five days, they raised enough money to fund 77,725 trees across 8 ecosystems, and I worked closely with both the Boomtown Team and our internal Marketing Team to bring this to life.
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Beyond the overall festival materials for awareness, Boomtown invited TreeSisters Founder, Clare Dubois, to speak at their opening ceremony, and showed our latest video (see below) showcasing where their donations would fund tree planting. Along with this, change pots were distributed to every stall, to collect spare change and fund additional trees; musicians shared the stage with graphics on screen to keep the forest alive throughout the weekend so that the festival truly embodied their goal to create a "new world".
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After the success of the initial activation, in 2020 Boomtown decided to grow a million trees! As part of Boomtown’s mission to make positive, significant change, they reached out to their beautiful community of citizens, musicians, artists, crew and contractors.
'It's time for everyone to become climate leaders and climate solutions. We have no more time for apathy or denial, it's all hands on deck now for our planet and our children's future.
TreeSisters are thrilled to support Boomtown in picking up the climate gauntlet and take leadership on the global stage. Thank you Boomtown for recognizing that your audience is an ecosystem of ecological impact just waiting to happen, and inviting them to accomplish a shared goal together.
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Sharing the TreeSisters story with over 50,000 people at the event was no easy feat, but Boomtown did everything in their power to ensure that creating a healthier, greener world was ever-present throughout the festival. At right are a sample of the graphics that were displayed throughout the venues myriad of stages, small screens and open areas as part of their content.
At top right, our Founder and CEO addressing the main stage audience.
“What would happen if we reimagined concerts and outdoor events to become celebrations that plant trees, that create momentum around restoration, while seeding love for the natural world into the hearts of so many?”
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Boomtown Festival’s Journey to One Million Trees
Understanding how important tropical reforestation is to our global climate, this video, which was conceptualised internally at TreeSisters and produced for Boomtown, was shown on stage in front of 50,000 patrons of the festival - planting seeds of hope and inspiration. Some of the planting projects it highlighted are listed below.
Brazil (Ashaninka Tribe project)
Brazil Wildlife Corridor in Sao Paulo
Mozambique Maputo Bay Mangrove Restoration
Madagascar Mangrove Restoration
Kenya Irangi Forest (Mt Kenya Foothills)
Nepal Reforestation
India Khasi Hills