With the
50th anniversary of Earth Day taking place on 22 April, we’re excited to share some of the great ways our Microsoft Advertising clients, partners and employees are supporting a greener future. We’re also sharing opportunities for everyone to get involved and earn our recently launched, official Microsoft Advertising Sustainability Champion Badge.
Aligned to Microsoft’s sustainability commitment to get to
carbon negative by 2030, we at Microsoft Advertising announced our own goal to plant 250,000 trees in 2020 on behalf of our clients, and with support from our partners and employees.
How to have trees planted on your behalf and earn the Sustainability Champion Badge
In honour of the
50th anniversary of Earth Day on 22 April, we’re running a limited time sustainability challenge across social media. From today, we’re asking you to share your sustainable tips on your own social channels and, in turn, we will fund 50 trees for each post that includes this blog link and hashtags
#MicrosoftForEarth and #MSFTAds (running until 30 April).
Throughout the year, we’re planting trees and awarding the Microsoft Advertising Sustainability Champion Badge for the following efforts:
Find us on
Facebook,
LinkedIn and
Twitter where we share monthly tips to support a more sustainable environment:
- When you implement any of these tips, or one of your own, share them on social media with #MicrosoftForEarth and #MSFTAds.
- We’ll also plant a tree each time our blog post is shared on social channels with #MicrosoftForEarth and #MSFTAds
Become a Sustainability Champion
In recognition of these efforts, we’ve created a Microsoft Advertising Sustainability Champion Badge! When you participate in any of the above activities, you can
download the Champion Badge here.
Be sure to let others know that you’re contributing to this cause by sharing the badge on your social handles, your website and email signature. Use #MicrosoftForEarth and a
link to our blog when sharing on social media and we'll plant an additional tree on your behalf!
Check out these Sustainability Champions –
Broadplace Advertising in the UK,
RocketROI in Spain and
11880 in Germany. Thank you for helping us progress toward our goal of planting 250,000 trees in 2020. Get your badge by participating in our sustainability activities.
Over 137,500 trees have been planted to date!
Here’s a roundup of some of the top supporting initiatives to help us achieve this goal:
- UK based agency, Impression, as well as more than 500 others, have contributed over 70,000 trees through their participation in the global Microsoft Advertising Get to Green contest.
- We planted 20,000 trees on behalf of our Global Partners that tuned in to Microsoft Advertising Elevate.
- 10,000 trees were planted to celebrate winners of our Regional Partner Awards, our annual award ceremony to recognise the great work of our European and APAC Elite and Select Partners.
- We planted 10,000 trees on behalf of our participants who attended our annual customer event, Discovery Days, in Dublin on 30 January instead of giving out swag.
- Clients who attended our SMX West Event contributed 400 trees to our goal. From one of the attendees, Ashley Segura, VP of Global Operations from TopHatRank: “Yes! I love seeing environmentally friendly initiatives instead of just more swag!”
- Newsletter subscribers clicked their way to more than 10,000 trees.
- New Microsoft Advertising Certified Professionals contributed 3,500 trees.
How, why and where we are planting 250,000 trees
A key part of Microsoft's culture is to empower employees to give back to and be active in programs that benefit our global and local communities. Microsoft Advertising has teamed up with our syndication partner,
Ecosia, to plant trees on behalf of our clients. Ecosia puts its profits from searches toward planting trees. We are thrilled to work with Ecosia to support tree planting in the following locations:
- The Jane Goodall Institute to reforest wild chimpanzees’ habitat in Uganda
- Turning deserts back into forests in Burkina Faso
- Reforestation in Brazil
Employee-led local activities have expanded our sustainability activities to the following locations, with more to come:
- Mark Richardson, Regional VP EMEA Corporate Sales and his team “braved a very wet, windy and muddy day” to plant trees by Dublin
- Sandrine Koopman, Account Executive and the Dutch Sales team invited 25 clients to join them cleaning the canals of Amsterdam
- Mascha Driessen, Regional VP Continental Europe Sales, led a fun team offsite planting activity in Madrid
- Nancy Weber, Account Manager and the German sales team used a volunteer day to clean local waterways in Hamburg
- Tina Aird, UK Marketing Lead, and the UK team ran a client quiz with tree planting prizes from London
- Geoff Burkhart, West Coast Sales Manager, and his team ran a 100% sustainable kick site in San Francisco
Bookmark the Microsoft Advertising blog where we will continue to celebrate our champions, share more details, and tell you all about new ways you can participate.
Thank you for being a part of creating a greener 2020 one tree at a time and helping us reach our 250,000-tree planting goal!