#WilderNextGen | National Geographic
SOCIAL CAMPAIGN | PR CAMPAIGN
2017 Webby Awards - Honoree - Social/Education & Discovery
Challenge
The October 2016 cover story of National Geographic discussed the changing ways that Millennials are engaging with U.S. national parks. We needed to find a way to engage a younger demographic, who this story was about, around this topic online, since the subscriptions to the magazine skewed older.
Leah created the hashtag and corresponding campaign #WilderNextGen, which is a double entendre/pun of “wilderness generation” and “wilder next generation” of national parks visitors.
Despite the notion that Millennials are sucked into their phones, photographer Corey Arnold found that younger park visitors were deeply engaged with the parks while he was there.
This campaign aimed to highlight people immersing themselves in nature to change the narrative about an otherwise “selfie generation.”
Campaign: #WilderNextGen
Tactics:
Engaged with social team to create a capture mechanism for posts using the campaign hashtag.
Coordinated with NG photographer Corey Arnold to curate his favorite user photos, which were amplified to promote the campaign.
Collaborated with NG digital team to public news story on nationalgeographic.com that launched the campaign and promoted it through daily publishing channels.
Coordinated media interviews for writer and photographer of the story in domestic press
Increased traffic to the online story
Heightened engagement on National Geographic’s social media accounts (Instagram, Twitter, Facebook)
Exposure for story author and photographer
18,000+ uses of the hashtag on Instagram alone
Campaign named a 2017 Webby Award Honoree in the Social/Education & Discovery category