Ecolabel – Real time campaign

The Federal Government was in search of a partner to promote their European Ecolabel in terms of awareness and general recognition. This label, an initiative of the European Union established in 1992, is recognizable by a logo in the form of a blue-green flower with stars as petals.

Although this logo acts as a visual guarantee that you’ve bought something durable and environmentally friendly, a lot of people still didn’t recognize it on certain packaging and/or didn’t really get the meaning of it.

To increase the recognition of the logo, the Federal Government called in our help with a very successful interactive real time campaign as end result.

 What we did?

We set up a field of 10.000 plants in an ecologically certified horticultural research centre in Destelbergen (Belgium). All the plants were azaleas from Gent, a regional product that is cultivated here in Belgium.

Each flower corresponded with an ecological, durable prize.  To ensure people could follow everything live on their screen via www.ecolabel.be, we installed a total of 25 cameras.

A contest with an ecological twist

These cameras were linked to an online contest. If people knew the answer to three quiz questions and took a good shot at the subsidiary question, they were assigned as caretaker for one of the 10.000 plants.

Each plant corresponded with a durable prize. From a LED-TV to ecological paint, interior advise, hotel overnight stay, cleaning and toiletry products and vouchers to collect Ecolabel products.

Which prize the participants won, all depended on the colour of their flower. Every two hours, from 8 am to 6 pm, we took a picture of every plant at the agricultural centre, which enabled participants to track the blossom of their flower very closely. Over the course of the campaign, 200 pictures were taken of each flower making a total of 2 million photographs!

Whenever they checked up on their flower, they also got to see the Ecolabel logo. As soon as the flowers were in bloom and revealed their colour, the participants could claim their prize.

During each of the four play rounds 2.500 azaleas were assigned which made a total of 10.000 flowers equaling 10.000 prizes! The website formed a central role, intensified by print, outdoor and social media.

During the whole campaign, participants got to see the logo 17 times on average enabling us not only to brand the logo into their mindset but also to give it a connotative meaning, which marked the success of this real time campaign.