Problem Solved: How Gotland’s Ugliest Lawn Changed the Game for Sustainability Campaigns
An extremely popular summer location, Swedish island Gotland’s population doubles during the holiday season. With one million yearly visitors and standing as one of the most popular European summer resorts, it regularly experiences droughts, so saving water has remained a high priority for years - especially as summers get hotter. So, in May, an irrigation ban was introduced on the island.
Tasked with coming up with an idea that would make people aware of Gotland’s acute water shortage, in came creative agency Differ, ready to convince citizens to use the precious resources more sparingly. What they came up with was a long term concept for conserving water not only in Gotland, but globally, by challenging the norm of green lawns. Recently selected to be presented and spread to the Heads of Commun citations at the EU member states Ministries of the Environment, the campaign proved to be a game changer by proving sustainability communication doesn’t need to be finger-pointing.
Proudly standing by their brown and dry lawns, gotlanders single-handedly made the competition an incredible success and decreased domestic water usage by 5%. Differ agency’s art director, Johan Gustafsson, tells LBB about how the initiative served as a catalyst for the whole world, and why Swedish people were quick to show off their ugly lawns.
WHAT YOU MADE
Gotland’s Ugliest Lawn is a simple but strong idea that saves water by changing the norm of green lawns around the world. The initiative helped decrease Gotland’s water consumption by 5%, compared to previous summer. It also reached 788 million people, with a media spend of only $114, and was recently praised by the OECD as an effective sustainability initiative.
THE PROBLEM
Gotland has an ambition to be a progressive force in climate matters, partly because the question lies so close to the heart. Gotland is an island with limited groundwater, it has one million yearly visitors, and is a popular summer resort. It regularly experiences drought conditions, meaning saving water is constantly a high priority.
Moreover, on Gotland, saltwater can be found relatively shallowly below the ground, meaning that over extraction of freshwater can lead to contamination by the saltwater. The consequence is that many wells that previously held freshwater are at risk of becoming unusable.
In May, a few weeks before the campaign started, an irrigation ban was introduced on the island. The brief was to come up with an idea to make people aware of Gotland's acute water shortage and get them to use water more sparingly, with a campaign with potential for organic growth.
The business goal of conserving the scarce resource of drinking water was clear in the brief. Given our longstanding collaboration with the client, we soon realized that the challenge was all about shifting people's mindset of what makes the island beautiful to make water conservation beautiful, even if it lacks aesthetic qualities. We wanted people to stop wasting water, and take pride in sustainability instead.
IDEATION
We figured that Gotland could save a lot of water if people could learn to see the beauty in an ugly, dry lawn. This led to the idea of creating an ‘Ugly Lawn’ competition for Gotlanders. The process after that was quite straightforward. Instagram was identified as a suitable platform for the competition, and the choice was an easy one since Region Gotland already had an audience there.
The inspiration came from the nature of Gotland - how it looks during a hot and dry summer. This, as well as our long term strategy for Gotland’s communication – to take something negative and make it positive.
PROTOTYPE & DESIGN
The campaign felt a bit undesigned. We wondered if we should work more with the key visual and supporting assets. Luckily we didn’t, since the authentic feel of the initiative probably helped make the PR launch a success.
We then put together a jury including a representative from the local newspaper to ensure a good local media coverage of the competition. One of the uncertainties, however, was that from the get-go, we were unsure of how many submissions for the competition we would get.
LIVE
Fortunately, from the beginning the competition got a lot of media attention, both on Gotland, and by one of the most popular podcasts in Sweden. When the winner was announced at the end of August, Swedish national media took a strong liking to the campaign. The winner was interviewed multiple times on national TV and radio.
At this time, Europe and Asia were experiencing a huge drought. We saw an opportunity to contact climate editors at leading international news media with our positive take on the complex problem of drought and water scarcity. Our winner was interviewed by BBC Newsday, The Washington Post and The Guardian, all of which were quick to write articles about our ugly Swedish lawns.
The enormous potential of a simple but clever idea is fascinating. I like the fact that anyone on the planet who has a lawn can participate in the initiative. It’s also one of the first widely-spread campaigns that highlights the fact that we need to learn to use much less of our planet’s resources - now and in the future - an obvious but probably slightly uncomfortable fact for the ad industry.
In hindsight, the project has achieved so much! It helped decrease domestic water use by 5% on Gotland last summer. It has also since established Region Gotland as a global leader on water conservation-issues. The initiative has inspired people all over the world to save water by seeing the beauty in ugly, dry lawns.
And the impact of the campaign is lasting! Last week, a region in southern Sweden started a local ugly lawn competition to save water. A radio station got its listeners to share images of their ugly lawns on their Facebook page. This week our client was invited to a sustainability conference hosted by the European Union to share the story of ‘Gotland’s Ugliest Lawn’, and inspire member states to create more effective water conservation campaigns. And yesterday The OECD praised the effect of ‘Gotland’s Ugliest Lawn’ in a new report on Swedish sustainability policies. So, obviously, this is something to be proud of, both for gotlanders and our agency.
