In 2019, Timberland launched ‘Nature Needs Heroes’ to support their long-term commitment to using recycled, organic and renewable materials in their product. Their global campaign set out to plant 50 million trees in 5 years and greening urban areas to combat climate change and enrich communities. However, the brand was facing a deep-rooted problem. Their core customers had aged and competitors were weighing in on younger UK audiences with innovative and customisable apparel. So with Black Friday sales ahead and a fraction of their competitors’ budgets, Timberland wanted to make some noise to get young consumers talking about (and wearing) its new Eurosprint Trekker boot.
The iconic yellow boot rose to fame in the 90’s on the feet of hip-hop gods like Tupac and Biggie, then Rihanna and Jay Z in the 00’s. Now they had Loyle Carner, the perfect ambassador to bridge their hip-hop heritage and ambition to inspire a global greening movement through a British lens. The Brit-nominated artist came to their attention when he started posting about ‘urban greening’ projects where rundown areas of cities are transformed into green, inspiring spaces. But to get onto the feet of a quintessentially cool younger generation in the UK, this partnership couldn’t be a straightforward celeb endorsement deal, so Timberland committed funding to regenerate two derelict areas in Loyle’s home borough of Croydon.
PHD needed a media partner with the best credentials, significant viewing figures and aligned values to bring the story to life in an AUTHENTIC way that wouldn’t be seen as another “green-washing” exercise. Cue MTV. Not only aligned in subject and tone with music and Brit hip-hop shows; MTV had also identified its audience’s interest in woke-ness and had its own ambitions to commission content in this space. So, the timing was perfect. Using the power of TV, we created long-form content with DRUM to tell the story of an aspirational young rapper making a difference in his community.
Timberland Presents: Concrete Green with Loyle Carner’ is a two-part miniseries that we broadcast during prime time (Mondays at 7pm) and on-demand for 2 weeks leading up to Black Friday. It showed Loyle and his crew (sporting head-to-toe Timberland gear) visiting various National City Parks London urban greening projects to see their development and meeting experts who explained its benefits for mental health, creativity and community pride. To conclude the journey, Loyle hosted an exclusive live performance to officially kick off the redevelopment of Timberland’s legacy community space.
We launched 30” TVC promos to promote the documentary during one of the biggest MTV Music events of the year, the MTV Europe Awards, where Loyle’s involvement drove greatest cut through. We were able to leverage Viacom Network’s eco system with promotional airtime (MTV), commercial airtime (MTV, Comedy Central, Channel 5) and VOD pre-rolls (across MTV + Comedy Central) driving mass reach and appointment to view in the lead up to the programme debut. Sky Media’s family of channels were really behind the project matching the investment £ for £ for airtime across terrestrial, VOD, and social; 100K was spent on media, but the total campaign value came out as £345K. MTV UK social posts alone delivered 652,343 video views, and was fuelled with Loyle’s own passion for the project when he told people to tune in to the show each of the nights it was on across his own social media too.
Persil 'Dirt Is Good' Project
