NRDC Action Fund Buzzfeed Campaign

NRDC Action Fund is the political arm of the Natural Resources Defense Council. Their mission is to build political support for fighting climate change and conserving and protecting nature and wildlife.

NRDC is well established among their core audience base—mainly white females aged 55+, with $60,000+ income, living in or near urban/coastal areas. However, to educate and mobilize the next generation of American voters, NRDC Action Fund needed to engage a younger, more diverse demographic than their typical audience base.

Partnering with Buzzfeed for a paid media campaign allowed us to drive awareness—with over 4.3 million video views—and rally a new audience of Millennials and Gen Z users to join the NRDC Action Fund in the fight for real climate solutions.

To meet the target audience where they consume media, we partnered with Buzzfeed and leveraged their sub brands, Cocoa Butter and Pero Like, which focus on content specifically around Black and Latinx culture. By aligning with a premium media brand that already has established credibility among our desired target audience, we could effectively raise awareness and credibility.

By leveraging Buzzfeed and their sub brands, both with their own social handles, we were able to run a large, cross platform campaign.

We took advantage of the significant daily site traffic on Buzzfeed, Cocoa Butter, and Perolike by placing high-impact, top-of-page billboard ads on the sites for four weeks. In tandem, we also ran ads on their social accounts.

Utilizing high-impact, rich media and social ad units allowed us to break through the clutter, driving strong ad engagement. Messaging that sympathized with the feelings of frustration around inaction was paired with images of pollution and green energy sources to strike an emotional chord with the audience.

Though the primary goal of this campaign was to drive awareness, we included a lead form on the NRDC landing page to allow users to connect with them.

Outcomes included:
-A video ad conversion rate of 65.5%
-An engagement rate of 0.18%
-2,718 total engagements
-4.3M video views on website + social