Reaching a Young, Diverse, Environmentally Aware Audience Online

Overview

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 Action Fund partners with Media Cause to increase awareness of their brand and the issues, grow their supporter base, and mobilize the American public.

The Outcome

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.

4.3M

video views on Buzzfeed website + branded social media accounts

65.65%

video conversion rate

2,718

engagements
The Challenge

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.

The Strategy

To meet the target audience where they consume media, we decided to partner with Buzzfeed. By aligning with a premium media brand that already has established credibility among our desired target audience, we could effectively raise awareness and credibility of the NRDC Action Fund.   

Utilizing high-impact rich media and social ad units allowed us to break through the clutter, ultimately driving strong ad engagement. A variety of ad placements and creative units in-market also allowed for increased optimization opportunities, ensuring above-benchmark campaign performance. 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.

The Implementation

Campaign Strategy Development

We reviewed and evaluated potential vendors with a large, diverse audience of younger users interested in the environment and sustainability. We chose to work with Buzzfeed—this included utilizing their social handles, Cocoa Butter and Pero Like, which focus on content specifically around Black and Latinx culture.  

The insights from the results of this campaign were utilized to develop a subsequent lead generation strategy.

Audience Targeting + Creative

We utilized the client’s first-party audience data to refine our targeting segments. The digital creative team at NRDC Action Fund provided engaging imagery and compelling copy for the ad units and landing page.  

We worked with the team at NRDC Action Fund to refine our target audience and create engaging imagery and compelling copy for the ads and the landing page. Though the primary goal of this campaign was to drive awareness, we included a lead capture form on the landing page to allow users to connect with the organization.

Strategic Media Placement

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. We also ran ads on the social media accounts of these popular brands.

The video ads proved to be highly impactful—the conversion rate of 65.5% was well above the 4% benchmark, and the engagement rate was 0.18%, far exceeding the 0.04% benchmark.

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