Every minute 36 football fields of tropical rainforest just disappear without most of us even noticing. It’s a shocking fact but it happens far away from people’s lives, so it’s harder to make them care.

We came up with another shocking fact based on statistics. A bold statement that brings the problem, literally, to people’s backyard: A tree is safer in the city than in the rainforest.

With this concept, we gave a fresh perspective on deforestation and inspired action. We brought it to life by building a full scale walking tree that seeks for protection and help in the city.

We literally brought our concept to life creating a real scale walking tree that took the streets of London by surprise asking for people’s help to make the forest safe again. It started as a live event, because the heart of the idea depended on people’s genuine and contagious reactions, but was always intended to become a film.

“Farewell to the forest” features a 117 years old walking tree running away from the forest to a safer place: the city. The film extended the tree’s pledge to the rest of the world in TV and social media. The viewers were asked to show their support and sign a pledge to protect one million trees in partnership with WWF in 2 threatened rainforest areas of Brazil and Indonesia.

The campaign was launched at the same time in 5 different markets and was supported by local events and social media.

By reconnecting people with trees we preserved two highly threatened rainforest areas in Brazil and Indonesia. The pledge was signed from India to Argentina in more than 90 countries.

We hit 77.5M views, 140M impressions, 1.4M website visits and 1.7M likes in Facebook.

Outstanding engagement rates of 7% in Social Media, doubling the brand average.

Most shareable Unilever post of 2015, even compared to content created by other love brands with impressive digital success like Dove, Omo & Axe.

UL were given extra free air space equal to 1M euros on open TV in Brazil

because the media considered the film a message worth spreading.

Results showed positive impact across all tracked KPIs (2014 vs 2015) in 4 markets.

The highlights were:

- 4,4% raise in brand Awareness in Indonesia

- 5,8% raise in brand linkage in Brazil.

- 8.3 % raise on brand awareness in USA