To mark World Tree Day (21 March), Spanish based independent football magazine Panenka launched a tree-planting campaign called ‘Planting Goals’ which encouraged readers/fans to plant trees, fight against deforestation and make sure that there is enough wood in the future to make goalposts for the next generation.
Emerging from research which found that the planet loses the equivalent of three football pitches of forest every single second, the campaign aims to engage and motivate football fans to address the climate crisis by linking the use of trees/wood as football goalposts.
Developed in harness with Ogilvy Social Lab, the magazine and the agency opted to do something practical about global warming by combining a love of football with a commitment to sustainability to ensure that young footballers of the future are able ‘to experience nature’s goalposts’.
So the April 2022 issue of Panenka saw subscribers receive a package containing tree seeds. Just by following the simple instructions, readers are asked to plant the ‘goalposts of the future’ and are thus encourage to plant each seed in a hole in the earth seven steps apart from one another – representing the official distance between two goal posts.
Thus the initiative aims to activate the football community to make the Earth a healthier environment for all and the immediate objective is to encourage and support readers/fans to plant thousands of goalposts globally.
The magazine/seed initiative is promoted by a parallel campaign kicking off in Spain and rolling out globally to coincide with the magazine launch backed by support from several former football players, plus soccer influencers, supporters, sports journalists and environmental activists.
The campaign, which runs with the hashtag #PlantaGoals, launched on 21 March and was led by an online video called ‘#PlantaPorterías’.
“At Panenka, we believe that everything that transcends soccer is more important than soccer itself. Thanks to soccer’s extraordinary reach and power to excite, it can and should be a tool to achieve a better world. One that is more tolerant, supportive, and respectful of the environment,” explained Panenka Editor Àlex López Vendrell. “Therefore, Panenka promotes the ‘Planting Goals’ initiative: so that through soccer we can raise awareness to create a greener and more sustainable planet for the future.”
Ogilvy Social Lab Amsterdam Executive Creative Director Tolga Büyükdoganay added: “At a picnic, or in a park, most of us played football with trees as goalposts. This simple, yet powerful insight allowed us to inspire the football community to plant trees in a way never thought before – by planting goals. It’s an idea that inspires football lovers to help the planet while guaranteeing goals in the future”.
Comment
‘World Tree Day’ aims to highlight the climate crisis in general and the importance of trees for both human life and the environment in particular.
This football initiative cleverly sees the magazine and Ogilvy Social Lab Amsterdam tap into an insight that resonates with anyone who ever played football as a child: most of whom at one point used two trees as goalposts.
Panenka uses this insight to encourage all readers to join in on the World Tree Day initiative by planting the trees of the future. Panenka’s goal is to use this initiative as an opportunity to focus attention on the football world’s commitment to a sustainable future in communities and inspire action to further the cause.
The campaign was created for Panenka by a team at agency Ogilvy Social.Lab Amsterdam led by ECD Tolga Büyükdoğanay, Creative Directors Fede Botella and Diego Lauton De Oliviera, strategist Tommy Wigley, Account Manager Murray Robertson, Public Relations Executives Teresa Dos Santos Serra, Anouk Slot and Emma Demes, while the production company was Besweet Films.
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