Amazon-backed sustainability group launches huge Facebook ad campaign
“The Climate Pledge” makes young women the face of their online campaign promoting big corporations’ sustainability programs
In late 2019, Amazon, its CEO, Jeff Bezos, and Global Optimism launched a public sustainability effort called “The Climate Pledge,” which “calls on companies and organizations to be net zero carbon across their businesses by 2040.” The initiative now boasts 110 brands that have signed on, including JetBlue, Mercedes-Benz, Coca-Cola, Pepsico, and the new Seattle arena named after the initiative.
It seems that now that The Climate Pledge has gotten over 100 signatories, it’s launched a Facebook ad campaign promoting the initiative and some of the biggest brands that have signed on. They’ve put young people - and young people of color in particular - at the center of their ads, having them challenge CEOs to do more to combat climate change.
One video ad starts with two young girls standing in floodwater:
“Dear CEO: What’s it going to take for you to do something? Do you even care? Climate change affects all of us. This is your chance to do something good.”
The Climate Pledge launched these ads on Monday, July 12th, and invested $64,452 on the ads on that day alone, so we expect them to remain a top spender on the platform for the duration of the campaign, however long that ends up being. And, despite the ads’ heavy emphasis on youth voices the primary audience for the campaign appears to be Americans nationwide aged 25 - 44.
We don’t know for sure if The Climate Pledge is running a Google/YouTube campaign of a similar size, since the Google Transparency Report only reports ads that specifically mention politicians, and these ads only pressure businesses and their CEOs. However, we do know that they’ve launched several Twitter ads, in addition to a similar Snapchat ad campaign that will go through August 15th that targets adults in the United Kingdom. So far, they’ve only spent £399 (or about $550) on these Snapchat ads, but they’ve made 68,199 impressions with them, according to the Snap Political Ads Library.
On social media, the reach of this campaign has thus far been limited. According to Crowdtangle, Facebook posts about The Climate Pledge have only earned about 22k interactions in the past year, while on Instagram, posts about the initiative have gotten over 196k interactions.
Interestingly, some of the most-engaged Instagram posts from earlier this year about the initiative have come from young American influencers promoting products they got off Amazon through their “#ClimatePledgeFriendly program.” This indicates to us that Amazon is trying to reach young audiences - through eco-conscious influencers they trust - that are keenly interested in sustainability in an effort to get them to use their service.