The DiversiTree Project

Read the campaign story

Claritin’s DiversiTree Project connected an allergy brand with urban tree planting. Launched in 2023, the programme promoted female trees and greater attention to planting choices in shared spaces. Energy BBDO led the creative work with supporting publicity and production partners. The central communication moved beyond a familiar symptom-relief message to ask how the environment people move through is planned and maintained.

The brand’s material and a Bayer-supported AAFA report describe the programme’s rationale. The report also places it in a wider discussion of pollen, weather and planting diversity. This case does not adopt the award entry’s numerical reduction claims or its promise of a pollen-free future. Species, local ecology and exposure conditions matter; a simple male-versus-female headline is not sufficient guidance for every tree or landscape.

Editorial interpretation: the brand finds a role upstream of the product’s usual moment of use. That can make a familiar category feel newly relevant by drawing attention to a decision people rarely consider. The communication becomes more credible when accompanied by a real programme rather than only an educational slogan. But an upstream role also creates a new burden of competence: planting and maintenance are specialist activities, not interchangeable publicity props.

Editorial interpretation: the useful story is a specific contribution, not the elimination of a complex problem. A newly planted tree may take time to mature, and a public site has many ecological and community needs. A responsible adaptation describes the intervention, the local advice behind it and the time horizon for evaluation. It should avoid presenting a health brand’s interest in the issue as independent proof that every promoted environmental claim is settled.

Identify a decision the organisation can improve

Map the system around the category and choose one decision that can be influenced responsibly. Clarify who owns it, who maintains the result and which specialists must be involved. A brand can support better practice without claiming to solve every cause of the problem. Select a contribution that remains useful even if the campaign receives little publicity.

Let local expertise constrain the creative promise

Consult qualified practitioners before choosing locations, species or performance claims. Consider biodiversity, climate suitability, water needs and long-term care alongside the headline objective. If those factors complicate the slogan, revise the slogan. Do not replace a nuanced environmental assessment with a simple binary merely because that binary is more memorable in an outdoor advertisement.

Report implementation before claiming health impact

Distinguish planned planting, completed planting, survival and any measured environmental change. Health outcomes require a different level of evidence and should not be inferred from activity counts. Disclose sponsorship when citing supporting research. A transparent account of what was done and what is still uncertain is more useful to other teams than a large, unsupported estimate of prevented harm.

A small test for another brief

Proposed test: a local business could fund a specialist-reviewed improvement to one shared outdoor space, with a plain-language explanation of the chosen design and its limits.

Measure whether the agreed work was completed, maintained and valued by users. Any environmental measurement should use a qualified method and appropriate comparison. Do not ask participants to change medication or report private health histories.

Stop if the intervention conflicts with local ecological advice or implies guaranteed symptom relief. Do not describe a planted space as allergy-free without adequate evidence.

• Ask residents and qualified landscape professionals to identify a suitable, manageable need.
• Agree maintenance responsibility and ecological requirements before commissioning materials.
• Publish a small implementation record with dates, costs and a realistic evaluation period.