Posts Tagged ‘Virtual Forest’
Who Needs An Angry Bird When You’ve Got a 6 Inch Boot?
Bad weather, bad cold, bad day … we can appreciate that even the most hardcore outdoor enthusiast needs some down time inside once in a while. Check out the new Games section on our website, where you can take quizzes to find out what kind of tree personality you have (sturdy oak or flirty palm?) and what your packing habits say about you.
If quizzes aren’t your thing, try the bottle crusher game: Using the hard core soles of your virtual boots to destroy as many plastic bottles as you can is dangerously addictive.
Those of you looking for games with greater goodness, check out our Earthkeepers virtual forest. You create the forest, invite your friends to join you there, and plant virtual trees. For every tree you plant in the virtual forest, you’ll help Timberland plant a real tree in Haiti. And isn’t that better than any trinket you ever won at the arcade?
Click here. Play now. It’s all fun and games until the next snowstorm takes your power out.
Bringing Back Arbor Day
Happy Arbor Day!
You don’t hear that very often these days. Like a lot of things in life, traditional, straightforward old Arbor Day has been bested by a newer, younger, shinier competitor – Earth Day. It’s Bugs Bunny vs. SpongeBob; K-Mart vs. Target; scotch vs. vodka; bowling vs. Wii bowling. And to make matters worse, Arbor Day is a week after Earth Day which is like throwing a big party on January 2nd, or seeing fireworks on July 8th. Tough to motivate…
And like the hottest new act or the trendiest designer, everyone wants a piece of Earth Day – green leaders, celebs, brands, bands, politicians, media companies and anyone looking to bask in the (environmentally-friendly) glow of Earth Day. The gang’s all there.
That’s certainly not a bad thing – it’s a great thing. Great that for a day at least, the big focus in our world is… our world. Great that maybe it turns some “no-greens” into “light greens” who will do their small part going forward. Great for the Timberland brand, since we need the outdoors to stay great — or you don’t really need us anymore.
But at Timberland, we actually like authentic, traditional stuff. Not stodgy or dated or out-of touch or boring, of course, but there’s something to the idea of simplicity – of basic, timeless activities done well or re-invented. Like bootmaking, say.
So this year, we’re naming ourselves the Official Worldwide Footwear, Apparel, and Accessories Sponsor of Arbor Day. OK, not really – we’re not sure that’s actually legal without paying a fee to someone … but the thought is there. At least for a day, we’re going to elevate Arbor Day because even though they give shade, trees deserve their day in the sun. (I literally just made that up).
So why are we doing this? A couple of reasons…
- Our logo is a tree. Our first word is Timber. Our second word is Land. Not super-complicated.
- We think trees are important. We’ve been planting them for 10 years in places like the Horqin Desert in China where reforestation is a critical issue. Our six nurseries in Haiti are up and running and providing sustainable fuel and food for people in need. For a large portion of the world, lack of trees is creating monumental environmental issues.
- We like getting people involved with our brand. We love to sell outdoor gear, but we also like making small differences. Our CEO calls it “doing well while doing good” – the idea that you can mix commerce and justice if you just try a little harder. And if you do, people will want to join in.
So, as the Official Worldwide Footwear, Apparel, and Accessories Sponsor of Arbor Day, we invite you to come join us for a few, easy-to-do activities on April 29th:
- Plant a tree with us. If you can click, you can plant. With our virtual tree planting application on Facebook, just set up your own virtual forest, get your friends to stop by and help, and we’ll plant a real tree for every virtual one you plant. No dirt, no mess, no need to do laundry.
- Find out what kind of tree you are with our “Hortiscope” quiz on Facebook. I’m an Oak, and apparently I’m “robust.” That seems pretty good. Better than a weeping willow, I suppose.
- Check out our “Arbor What?” video on YouTube to see just how unknown and under-celebrated the holiday really is.
There’s a reason why trees got their own day 139 years ago – help remember why on April 29th. Take a 10-minute break from watching Royal Wedding videos, click on over and plant one on us. There’s just a small amount of pomp and no circumstance, but you’ll make a small difference.
Celebrate Earth Month With More Trees!
This is a very exciting week for tree planting at Timberland: in honor of Earth Month, we’re increasing the tree ratio in our Virtual Forest Facebook Application to 1 to 1. Forget about the complicated two-real-trees-for-every-25-virtual-trees shenanigans… we’re making it simple. From now on, when you plant one virtual tree, Timberland will plant one real tree in Haiti (up to one million). Now that’s something to celebrate!
This change to the app will be retroactive, bumping up the number of additional real trees we’ll be planting in Haiti to over 100,000 thanks to all of the virtual planting that’s been done so far! Planting a tree in the app is easy if you have a Facebook account. If you haven’t already, we invite you to join the Timberland Earthkeepers Virtual Forest and invite your Facebook friends to join, too: http://apps.facebook.com/timberlandtreeapp/
In partnership with Trees for the Future, the trees we’re planting will provide food, fuel and shelter for the people of Haiti. For example, one of the trees we’re planting, the benzoliv (moringa) tree, has leaves packed with seven times more vitamin C than oranges, four times more calcium than milk, and three times more potassium than bananas. That’s a real “miracle tree” for combating malnourishment — and together we can plant more of them in Haiti. So let’s get planting, invite our friends to help and spread the word!
Learn more about Timberland’s tree planting efforts in Haiti
Help Us Plant an Additional 1 Million Trees in Haiti
Are you excited about planting trees? We certainly are. So much so that in addition to the real trees we’re planting around the world, we’ve launched a new Timberland Earthkeepers Virtual Forest application on Facebook. By creating their own individual virtual forests and inviting friends to plant trees in them, members of the Facebook community are helping to get real trees planted in Haiti. So far, as a result of the Facebook community’s adoption of the application, which was launched in October, 1,762 real trees will be planted in Haiti
If you haven’t checked it out already, go ahead and do so. By either planting trees in already existing virtual forests or by creating your own forest, you can help Timberland plant an additional 1 million real trees in Haiti. It’s that simple. The more virtual trees and virtual forests, the more real trees we’ll plant in Haiti (up to 1 million) – above and beyond the ones we’re already planting there. Create a forest and invite your friends to do the same and then plant trees in each other’s forests too. Nature will thank you. Haiti will thank you and Timberland will thank you by planting more trees. And while you’re there, check out the videos that chronicle our projects in Haiti and share them with your friends. Then, share your ideas with other virtual tree planters from all around the world on the CONVERSATION tab.
We’re also working on some updates to the Virtual Forest, so stay tuned for those changes at the beginning of December.
And if you like the app, please nominate us for Most Creative Social Good Campaign for the Mashable Awards. Helping to spread the word about the Virtual Forest throughout the social media community equals more application users, which leads to more virtual trees, which means more real trees planted in Haiti. Let’s get to 1 million!
Excited About Planting Trees
Since last Tuesday, September 28, I’ve been coming to work excited. I’m talking two-stairs-at-a-time excited. Excited about planting trees and excited to think about how to get other people excited about planting trees.
It was last Tuesday that I monitored Timberland’s quarterly stakeholder conference call about “The Real Impact of Tree Planting.” (You can listen to the podcast here.) Our CEO, Jeff Swartz, hosts these calls to discuss with stakeholders (who range from other CEOs to non-profit leaders to influential environmental stewards to Timberland consumers), topics that directly impact Timberland’s CSR agenda. The goal of the call is to share with the participants ideas we consider, challenges we face and best practices we develop as we go about our business of making boots and being an environmentally and socially responsible company. Jeff and invited partners get the dialogue started and then the stakeholders share their thoughts, ideas and challenges.
The quarterly calls are stakeholder engagement at its finest. It’s a cool concept – stakeholder engagement. And guess what, it really works! I know because I witnessed it last Tuesday.
After Jeff and Dave Deppner from Trees for the Future, our partner in the Yele Vert tree nursery project in Haiti, set up the call with some really meaningful comments, the callers started asking great questions and sharing some valuable insight. These were extremely smart, engaged people from organizations like Alcoa, the World Wildlife Fund and the New York Restoration Project – people who really care about trees and are managing these truly impactful projects, just like the ones Timberland is supporting in Haiti and China.
The questions and the ensuing dialogue got me thinking about the commitment to plant five million trees in five years in Haiti and China that Timberland made at the 2010 Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) the previous week. I wondered; how can we a) get people to understand why we plant trees and why it matters; and b) get other companies to join us to exponentially increase the impact.
Yeah, increase exponentially. If Timberland and its partners, Trees for the Future and Yele Haiti, can build six tree nurseries in Gonaives, Haiti in less than six months by engaging and training the local farmers, who will eventually take ownership of the nurseries, imagine what can five companies like Timberland could do with the help of five partners like Trees for the Future.
If our six nurseries will produce more than 1 million trees per year at full capacity, imagine what 30 nurseries will produce in a year – 5 million! And if those 5 million trees we’re planting annually provide the local citizens with sustainable resources for food, fuel, shelter and watershed management – not to mention jobs – well, imagine how many houses we can build, homes we can heat, stoves we can fuel and mouths we can feed.
And imagine – this is what gets really exciting – if the local farming population, which is now trained and engaged at every level of forestry and agriculture, arrives at the juncture where their crop productivity has increased to the point where they can not only feed their families but have enough corn and rice and other corps left over to sell – for a profit – to the very companies that initially helped the farmer set up their tree nurseries!
And then imagine if each of those companies implemented creative ways, like social networks, to tell the story of the farmer and his tree nurseries to their consumers. The stories would excite the consumers and inspire them to tell their friends and those friends told their friends and so on and so on – to the point where the company gained more consumers, sold more products and were able to invest more dollars into building more tree nurseries.
Imagine. Isn’t it exciting to imagine?
So what’s next? I’m going to start reaching out to leaders at other companies and see if I can’t get them excited and interested in planting trees with us. And you? For starters, you can check out our new Facebook application where you can cause real trees to be planted in Haiti by creating a virtual forest. The more virtual trees and virtual forests, the more trees we’ll plant in Haiti – in addition to the ones we’re already planting there. And while you’re surfing around the app, check out the videos that chronicle our projects in Haiti and share them with your friends. Then, share your ideas on how to get people more excited about planting trees on the application’s Wall, or join the conversation on our Earthkeeper Forum. If you’ve read this far, you’re now officially a Timberland stakeholder and as such, we welcome your engagement at any and all levels.
Imagine a company that wants to engage with its stakeholders about the simple act of planting a tree. Isn’t that exciting?
Margaret Morey-Reuner
Senior Manager of Values Marketing, Timberland
