Our creative idea came from the product itself. Humboldt Redwood is harvested sustainably. It’s a key part of their company philosophy, and a critical advantage over their plastic composite competitors. We thought…why not use that same philosophy as the premise of the ongoing video campaign?

So we did. We recycled the footage from the talking plank commercials we’d already run. We simply re-wrote the scripts, re-recorded the voice, and re-edited the spots. In the end, without shooting an additional frame of footage, we harvested more than a dozen new videos, all of which reinforced Humboldt Redwood’s primary competitive advantage: Sustainability.

Given the very small production budget and tight timeline, the “Sustainable” campaign consisted entirely of existing footage, stills, stock images and stock music. Each “old” commercial was repurposed in a variety of ways to create new video content, enough to fill Humboldt Redwood’s many social channels (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram) for calendar year 2017 and possibly beyond. To let viewers in on the premise, each video opened with a musical treatment that introduced the series as “Sustainable Footage: Old Commercials, Now with New Words”. In all, including static pieces, we produced over 100 pieces of “Sustainable” social content.

In the past decade, sales have declined for the entire redwood industry. Most of this decline was due to misconceptions about quality and limited sustainability.

This past year, thanks to high amounts of sharing, the “Sustainable” videos reached an audience 22x the size of their follower base.

As the sustainability message has taken hold, greater sales have followed. At the time of this writing, Redwood is in the midst of its most successful 12-month stretch since 2007.