Danone and IPÊ Partnership – The Dino Forest

IPÊ and Danone have teamed up for a limited-time promotion called “Danoninho para Plantar” (Danoninho for Planting), with the aim of getting children (and adults too) interested in nature conservation and helping to reforest the Atlantic Forest.

Partnership objectives

Raising children’s awareness of the importance of conserving nature and introducing them to the subject in a fun way;

Strategy adopted

Each package of the new “Danoninho para Plantar” comes with an exclusive code that allows consumers to create a virtual tree in the “Dino Forest”(http://www.danoninho.com.br/FlorestaDoDino/). On the website, you can choose the type of tree you want to plant in the forest. It must be watered until it grows so that it can be counted. Each cultivated tree is virtually worth 1 m² of native forest. And that’s not all. While growing their virtual tree, children have access to environmental content developed by IPÊ researchers.
The little ones can also experience what it’s like to plant a seed. The promotion package comes with sachets of vegetables to be grown in the Danoninho pot itself after consumption.

Results obtained

• Less than a month into the campaign, Dino’s Forest was already a huge success with more than 4,300 virtual trees planted by consumers, and ended with 84,000 real trees planted.
• The saplings are being planted in the municipality of Nazaré Paulista, in an important area of riparian forest, which is fundamental for water conservation, since deforestation not only harms flora and fauna, but also the quality and volume of water in rivers and dams that supply the population.
• Sales of the product exceeded all the company’s expectations, with more than 5.5 million trays sold during the campaign period.
• The spontaneous media generated was enormous (21 million people reached) and the brand image gains were surprising, to the point where Dino, the iconic Danoninho character, is already recognized by the public as a friend of nature.
• This campaign also won Danone do Brasil an international award, given annually by Danone (the French parent company) in recognition of its innovation.

Developments

This campaign, as well as trees in the Atlantic Forest, has already yielded a great story to tell. In Araporã, a small town in Minas Gerais, a teacher decided to use the Danoninho trays and the seeds from the sachets to teach her 31 students practical lessons about the environment. The activities were so successful that they resulted in a video and other materials being sent to Danone. The company, in turn, decided, together with IPÊ, to surprise all the students at the school by taking Dino, the campaign’s main character, with them!

The partnership between IPÊ and Danone will not stop with this first campaign. We’ll have even more news in 2011!