The Fair Trade Difference Campaign

The responsive Fair Trade Difference landing environment
The responsive Fair Trade Difference landing environment

October 2019 

Challenge

Fair Trade USA wanted to do something special to celebrate 20 years that would create engagement and grow the audience base.

Solution

The Fair Trade Difference campaign told the story of the organization’s 20-year impact through an interactive consumer campaign landing environment telling the fair trade story, showcasing fair trade products and their impact, and offering a chance to win $8,000 worth of fair trade products from Kroger and West Elm through a giveaway.

The campaign slogan, which I coined, has been picked up and used by partnering brands like PrAna and PACT as a succinct way to explain fair trade to their consumers:

I can make a choice. WE can make a difference.

  • Video header
  • Floating jump navigation
  • Shop-able product images
  • Custom-made “Behind the Seal” button opens a modal window that tells a product’s impact story
  • Embedded giveaway signup form

How I helped

  • Collaborated with the visual designer to create wireframes for an interactive landing page
  • Conceptualized and created wireframe for the new “Behind the Seal” component and
  • Wrote page copy
  • Conceptualized and developed content for the timeline
  • Wrote the campaign messaging and slogan (above)
  • Built the pages themselves in the CMS
  • Collaborated with the data team to distill impact data into email graphic. Wrote copy for graphic.

Email Graphic

I collaborated with the Fair Trade USA Data team to analyze and collect impact data for this graphic comparing key performance indicators in Year 1 vs. Year 20 to show how the organization had grown.

Results

Over 50 million consumers heard the Fair Trade Difference message with overwhelmingly positive response as a result of distribution via social media, email, paid media circulation, and utilization of our influencer and partner networks. The page garnered 67k new email signups, doubling Fair Trade USA’s email base.

Celebrities and business partners gathered at a special event in NYC that garnered celebrity endorsements and media attention in numerous top publications, including People. 

Learnings

GDPR compliant or not, giveaways aren’t a good way to acquire emails. The quality and engagement of our email database declined significantly dropped because of the subscribers who were only there for the hope of “free stuff.” As later learned through an email purge campaign, it’s quality over quantity, and the way those emails are acquired is directly tied to quality.