Description:

What do you do when you plant 20 million trees a year, and re-planted Rotoroa Island to make it a native sanctuary, but are still seen as a cute little Northland nursery?

You find another gear.

What was the new gear and how did we find it?

We asked: “What makes you special and why is it weird?”

Answer: “We’re environmentalists but we don’t tie ourselves to trees. We just keep on planting them.”

Then: “What are you really in the business of (and you can’t say plants)?”

Answer: “We’re in the business of clean water; we’re in the business of life.”

This is how Kauri Park, a 30-year-old, family-owned, nursery transformed into a team of ecovitalists who only have one client - Mother Nature.

In a world of climate hot-air-chit-chat, we became visionaries with dirty fingernails.

In a category that competes on a price-per-plant, we chose to educate our customers on how to design ecosystems that are designed to be teeming with life for generations to come.

When competitors argue their scale is comparable to ours, we rise above by sharing our strong sense of self and sense of urgency, captured simply as:

We think like a plant.
We speak for the trees.
We act for the planet.

When asked to choose between being commercially savvy or environmentally effective, we say “No nature, no economy. No economy, no nature.”

Kauri Park has ascended to become a category of one - not a nursery, but the only experts who believe that “Nothing teaches like doing”, committed to “delivering the ecology economy”.

More than this, our brand and design strategy birthed a brand purpose that will leave a lasting national, and global, legacy. Mission 212 is Kauri Park’s mission to revitalise 212,000km of Aotearoa’s waterways (the number that need urgent restoration) so that they are teeming with life. For context, 212,000km is halfway from Earth to the moon.

This audacious mission has galvanised staff, injected pride and created a conversation platform that will engage large corporates and local business, up and down the country, region by region, generating earned media, word of mouth and new customers.

This is strategic brand transformation from the inside-out:

FROM: A collection of workers
TO: Ecovitalists, and plants, on a mission

FROM: A nursery
TO: The experts who deliver the ecology economy

FROM: Selling plants in pots
TO: Specialist creators of ecosystems

FROM: Competing on price
TO: Leading with vision

We have created (in)valuable new brand equity on a scale the owners didn’t believe possible.

In 12 months:
- 250% increase in new website users
- Page views up 200%
- Doubled the customer database
- 6 x uplift in social engagement rate
- From 0 to thousands of qualified customer leads through the site.

Kauri Park is now a brand with soul and substance, unified through storytelling, executed through smart design thinking.
Why? Mother Nature sent us.