Consumers around the world are increasingly aware of the essential role forests play in the face of the climate crisis. Many want to make the necessary changes to decrease their impact, but few know how. Recent data from GlobeScan uncovered what they call the “aspiration-action gap”, finding that the desire to become more sustainable is about twice as high as the actual changes made in day-to-day lifestyle (1). The Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) is in a unique position to help. Since its inception FSC has always believed in the power of the consumer to drive meaningful change throughout the supply chain.
Today, with over 50,000 certificate holders creating materials and products from FSC-certified sources, along with high levels of trust and recognition in the FSC label(2), the organization is uniquely positioned for success. To achieve this, FSC must ramp up efforts to further drive awareness, connecting audiences with the ready-made solutions that exist today.
Fortunately, these efforts are already well underway.
The recent FSC Forest Week campaign, “Choose Forests, Choose FSC” was a significant moment with the worldwide participation of more than 1200 chain of custody and promotional license holders. Aimed at consumers to drive awareness and demand for FSC, the campaign reached over 42 million potential individuals and enjoyed a boost from organizations like Rainforest Alliance, Tetra Pak, SIG, Hallmark, DS Smith, Woolworths, Garnier, WWF and even the K-pop girl group BLACKPINK. FSC Forest Week will continue in 2023 running from September 24th to 30 and you can pre-register your organization today.
To achieve a stronger global presence FSC is in the process of doubling the language footprint for its Forests, For All, Forever text-only brandmark. It is now available on the marketing toolkit in 4 additional languages: Polish (®), Italian (™), Japanese (™) and Korean (™) and will be extended to cover Turkish, Indonesian and Vietnamese in 2023.
FSC has also upgraded its global website (fsc.org), emphasizing engagement and action. Early data shows positive indicators: thanks to the new educational content, users are spending more time and exploring more content on the site per visit, while the bounce rate (users who only view one page and leave immediately) has dropped by approximately 90%. What do you think? Let us know your impression by filling out the FSC.org User Feedback Survey.
Additionally, FSC is also piloting a new consumer activation campaign entitled Forests First. The goal of this campaign is to motivate the public to protect forests by choosing FSC-certified forests. To bring this to life, corporate partners will be asked to contribute to the FSC Forests First Fund. This charitable fund will be used for paid media funding and in-kind media donations for digital public education campaigns. Forests First will be piloted in the US with the goal to go live with $1 million in media value in 2023.
Last but not least, FSC travelled to Thailand to interview several rubber farmers and collectives, spotlighting the social, economic and environmental impacts of FSC certification.
See the the documentary titled ‘Rubber Rebounded: Stories premiered on YouTube.
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GlobeScan Healthy & Sustainable Living Study 2021 (survey of 30,000 people in the general public)
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GlobeScan’s FSC Global Consumer Awareness Study 2021 (survey of 12,000 people in 15 markets)