Successful Green marketing: The Pokémon go Earth Day Clean up 2019
As marketing students, we all know how powerful great marketing can be. It can enhance sales, improve reputation and build strong relationships with new and existing consumers.
Marketing can help firm direct people to feel certain ways about a brand, but it can also encourage actions among consumers and communities and this has huge potential for increasing sustainable behaviour.
The Pokémon Go Earth day clean-up
Now I’m sure you all remember (2016), where everyone in the world seemed to want nothing more than to play Pokémon go.
Countless news stories and social media post covered the game that seemed to explode in popularity out of nowhere.
At the most basic level, the game core focus is about going out, either alone or with friends, and catch Pokémon, cute creatures with special powers, in order to train and compete with them in battles against other players.
- Players use their phones to catch and train Pokémon to battle against other players (Pokemon.com 2022)
A core design aspect of the app is community. Players need to look for each other to learn the game, it encourages keeping in touch with other players to measure progress and collaborating with other leads to far more rewards than playing alone would. It essentially used FOMO to encourage people to get out and see more of the world (Vincent 2019).
Bigger than just a game
With the incentives the game gives to get out into nature and the emphasis on community and collaboration, Pokémon Go was uniquely aligned to push sustainability initiative’s it players could get behind. Pokémon gas developer, Niantic, worked 46 organisations and 41 countries to push 17,000 players to band together into cleaning teams for Earth Day 2019. (Vincent 2019)
- Pokémon Go players picking up trash as part of earth day 2021 (Palladino 2019)
They incentivised participation in a number of ways. 1st, they allowed the volunteers to nominate organisations within “green earth” space. Second, the developer also a offered participants unique in game rewards and collectibles as well as an array of unique in game events to draw awareness to the issue.
The results
Over the course of 5 days, the volunteers and their partners were able to remove 145 tons of trash. Around 41,000 of time was donated by the players and the developer has looked to expand theory initiatives since.
- Niantic’s new pledges for earth day 2019 (Connoly 2019)
What other firms can learn
In my view, the event was successful because the goals of the firm aligned with the goals of the existing product
The event also gave the players a sense of ownership. By giving participants a chance to nominate potential partners, they could feel more connected to reason they were volunteering
Other firms can learn from Niantic’s example. Marketing departments spends Millions of dollars and many years building brands and their communities. However. they can also strengthen their push for sustainability by targeting problem areas that align with the brand image.
References:
Daily Hive Vancouver Staff. (2016). Hundreds of Pokemon Go players crowd Robson Square. Available: https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/pokemon-go-vancouver-robson-square-photos. Last accessed 4th Feb 2022.
Pokemon.com . (2022). Tips to get started in Pokemon Go trainer battles. Available: https://www.pokemon.com/us/strategy/tips-to-get-started-in-pokemon-go-trainer-battles/. Last accessed 4th Feb 2022.
Palladino, T. (2019 ). Niantic Offering In-Game Rewards to Pokémon GO & Ingress Players Who Pitch in on Earth Day Cleanup Events. Available: https://mobile-ar.reality.news/news/niantic-offering-game-rewards-pokemon-go-ingress-players-who-pitch-earth-day-cleanup-events-0195312/. Last accessed 4th Feb 2022.
Connolly, D. (2019). Pokemon GO: When Do Earth Day Rewards Unlock?.Available: https://gamerant.com/pokemon-go-when-do-earth-day-rewards-unlock/. Last accessed 4th Feb 2022.
Vincent, B. (2019). ‘Pokémon Go’ Developer Helps Clean Up 145 Tons of Trash For Earth Day 2019. Available: https://variety.com/2019/gaming/news/niantic-earth-day-2019-1203204693/. Last accessed Feb 4th 2022.
Awesome blogpost Spencer! It is a topic that has interested me a lot, since PokemonGo is one of my favorite games, and I find it very interesting that mobile games like these are so concerned about the environment and have sustainable initiatives of this caliber. It is a very original blog, since it is not usually a very common news and that is another reason why I really liked this blog. From the news I was very surprised by the fact of the magnitude of the movement and how Niantic worked with 46 organizations and 41 countries to push 17,000 players to band together into cleaning teams for Earth Day 2019. As well as the huge impact that the initiative provided which was to eliminate 145 tons of trash. I would like to see other apps and games learn from PokemonGo and push initiatives like this from now on to improve the world we live in.
ReplyDeleteHi Spencer, great post! I would be lying if I said I wasn't obsessed with Pokemon Go when it was first released! Even though I didn't know much about the Pokemon I was catching, the adrenaline rush of finding and catching one couldn't be beat. It is very interesting to see how Niantic took this adrenaline rush and put it to good use for the environment, especially with the in-game rewards it provided. Having global rewards incentivised players to join the movement; these rewards were available for all encouraging collective action of all players, so all Pokemon Go enthusiasts joined forces to have the Pokemons and clean planet of their dreams! This truly portrays how all stakeholders play a role in building a sustainable future.
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