Work

Rewilding means giving places back to nature by planting, growing and looking after the land. It locks up carbon, helps biodiversity and improves our health and wellbeing. The Republic of Ireland has the lowest forest cover of any country in Europe - 80% of Irish land was once covered by native trees, but the figure is now just under 2%. innocent is working with rewilding partner, Grown Forest, funding 10,000 native trees being planted this year.

To launch the campaign, innocent and THINKHOUSE commissioned a piece of research to discover how Irish people feel about rewilding. The Big Rewild research showed:

● 86% of people ‘care about Ireland’s wild/natural environment’

● Only 2 in 10 people believe that ‘Ireland’s wilderness is thriving’

● 72% of people are ‘worried about the loss of true Irish wilderness’

This inspired us to create the Big Rewild School with a mission to help people become more wilderness-literate. The innocent drinks’ Big Rewild School hosted free events open for families to come along for a day of fun in nature - served with a side of innocent drinks’ carbon-neutral orange juice.

To help launch the Big Rewild, we partnered with a gardener passionate about rewilding - Ireland’s most famous TV garden designer, Diarmuid Gavin, who brought his expertise to bear with simple rewilding tips we can all do within our gardens. We also recruited Mel McDermott of Galz Gone Wild and Sarah Hourigan of Nature Therapy Ireland who joined the Big Rewild School, leading a family-friendly hike in the Wicklow Mountains sharing their knowledge of nature, driving literacy about native Irish species with attendees.

To help further spread the message about the Big Rewild, we created an educational vertical garden by ‘rewilding’ a grey cement wall in Smithfield, Dublin 7. The wall was situated in one of Dublin’s busiest streets and the outdoor ‘ad’ itself was rewilded using native plants, shrubs and trees, providing a splash of greenery for commuters. Each plant was labeled with information so that passers-by could learn a bit more about the unique benefits of the specific species, imagine our once much greener, wilder Island and be inspired to protect and restore nature themselves. And we ensured super sustainability and donated all the native plants, shrubs and trees to a local community garden once the campaign was complete, extending the joy even longer.

The campaign generated huge national attention and coverage with 249 individual pieces and a total reach of 5,866,762.

Keith Nelson, Country Manager, innocent drinks, said: “We’re so proud of our global Big Rewild campaign. In Ireland, we partnered with Grown Forest who are doing amazing work and this activity helps us support them in planting more native Irish trees across the country and protecting Irelands biodiversity. The Wild Wall was a disruptive, beautiful display in the centre of Dublin, and Diarmuid Gavin was a perfect fit to help launch things. Along with the Big Rewild School event, this campaign delivered our biggest PR reach of the last 5 years and all that was delivered with THINKHOUSE who did an amazing job. I might be a bit biased but I think we had the best Big Rewild PR campaign across the whole of innocent.”