Case Study: Taking an NGO’s Environmental Message to Millions with UGC
Working with creators like Big Manny, we reached millions with Moors for the Future’s message on Peak District wildfire risks
2025 saw yet another long, hot, dry summer and the Peak District was a tinderbox, one stray disposable BBQ away from catastrophe. As part of our ongoing commitment to 1% For the Planet, we teamed up with Moors for the Future to educate an audience unlikely to be aware of the heightened risk of wildfires in the area.
Maximising Reach and Engagement with Content Creators
The Moors for the Future team were looking for an innovative way to reach ill-informed Peak District visitors. We proposed working with multiple creators, each producing their own, informative, UGC-style content, offering more exposure for their budget than they would get investing with one big shoot.
The Moors for the Future team were into the idea, so we set to work picking a range of creators that would reach different segments of the target audiences. We wanted to commission content that was informative but didn’t come across as lecturing. The creators were briefed to produce content tailored to their audience. We didn’t want videos that came across like overly-scripted public service announcements; we wanted the content to work organically and not veer away from the creator’s established style.
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Using Science to Explain Wildfires With Big Manny
The biggest name in our creator lineup was Big Manny, a London-based science communicator. He’s one of those people who can break down complicated topics and keep them digestible. Most Instagram and TikTok users will have seen one of his videos at some point.
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His video explained how wildfires can spread underground, with Manny demonstrating why stamping a fire out doesn’t mean it’s really gone. The Reel was an instant success, reaching millions of organic views in just a couple of days. Even for Manny this was good. It was his highest-reaching and most engaged post of the year, attracting over 210k likes and more than a thousand positive comments.
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Targeting young families in the Peak District with Isobel Cummins
The Peak District is the busiest national park in the UK, attracting millions of day visitors each year from its bordering northern cities. To help us find the urbanites and young families, we decided to work with Isobel Cummins, a Manchester-based family content creator.
She created an aspirational and informative day in the life video. We made the tactical decision to post this towards the end of the school summer holidays, when families might be running out of ideas for activities. For this, we kept the wildfire messaging light. Isobel wove the advice naturally into her voiceover, keeping the content authentic.
We arranged to post this Reel collaboratively, so it tapped into both Isobel’s and the Moors for the Future audience. Her piece got a really strong number of impressions, with a decent engagement rate, serving as a gentle heads-up for the weekend crowd.
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Performance data for future campaigns
We wanted to increase awareness and, in turn, audience size for Moors for the Future. Using content creators, collaborative posts and paid media campaigns all helped make this happen. Instead of preaching to the converted, 99% unaware of the audience we reached were unaware.
The ads were seen on 3.4 million occasions, with an even split in impressions by age category. Certainly a good sign that we were hammering the point home from all angles.
Better still, Moors for the Future’s Instagram following increased by nearly 25% thanks to the campaign and the partnership gained a bank of performance data, content insights, and audience learnings to build into any future campaigns. We look forward to iterating on the success of this campaign and partnering with them on our future 1% For The Planet contributions.
