2025 Winner

CASE SUMMARY

When forests burn, the demand for outdoor apparel vanishes.

Tentree, an outdoors apparel company, has been a pioneer in environmental stewardship since 2008, planting 10 trees for every piece of clothing sold. As environmental disasters intensify, the company faces a pressing challenge at the heart of its business: each year, wildfires cause millions in lost revenue due to closures of recreational areas like national parks and trails.

Recognizing that simply replacing lost trees wasn’t enough to help combat the growing threat of wildfires, tentree knew it needed to take a proactive stance to protect the landscapes that sustain its mission.

Opportunity appeared when the brand pinpointed a critical gap in wildfire detection. In Canada, 55% of wildfires ignite in recreational areas — our trails, lakes, and forests — where people connect with nature. Yet, traditional detection methods like satellites and drones are tailored for remote regions, overlooking these populated outdoor spaces. This blind spot delays early detection, letting fires become unmanageable, leading to widespread devastation.

So how could they catch wildfires while they’re still small enough to fight?

The solution, it turns out, was already in the very places where tentree’s customers live and play.

Sharing nature’s beauty is routine, less obvious is the danger it can expose. Rather than imposing new habits on Canadians, they leaned into a common behaviour for outdoor lovers (nature ranks as the third most shared topic on Canadian Instagram).

Each photo captured on a casual hike or during a lakeside moment carries subtle, latent signals that can reveal the embryonic stages of a wildfire. The agency realized that by leveraging this digital behavior, they could build a dynamic early-warning system, shifting the paradigm from reactive, costly interventions to proactive, community-driven prevention.

Most importantly, they realized the blind spot had hundreds of eyes on it already, but none of them were watching out for wildfire signs.

Turning nature’s Instagrammers into their largest firefighting force. Following Wildfire uses AI to detect early wildfire signs the human eye might miss in real time social media photos, enabling fire authorities to act before fires grow out of control.

It scans images shared with popular outdoor hashtags or locations from wildfire-prone areas in Canada, turning every post into a potential fire alert.

“Following Wildfire” blends technology, community engagement, and brand advocacy. Social data is at the heart of the idea, transforming the ubiquitous, real-time stream of social media images into a decentralized network for early wildfire detection.

The backbone of their approach was an AI-powered algorithm that could process hundreds of images per minute. They trained the algorithm using a vast dataset that included historical wildfire imagery, coupled with contextual data such as local weather patterns and vegetation indices from wildfire-prone regions. This multi-layered approach enabled it to distinguish between benign outdoor scenes and those containing the faint indicators of a developing fire. The integration of environmental data with real-time social media content allowed them to increase precision in estimating potential risks.

While the AI provided rapid and efficient analysis, accuracy was paramount. Once the algorithm flagged an image with potential fire indicators, a dedicated and trained moderation team reviewed the data to filter out false positives and confirm genuine threats.

This dual approach combining AI precision with human oversight, ensured that the alerts sent to local fire authorities were both timely and actionable.

Simultaneously, tentree spearheaded a nationwide campaign — across social, OOH, TV, and partnerships with outdoor creators — encouraging Canadians to share photos of their outdoor adventures. The message was clear: every post could play a critical role in safeguarding our forests.

Strategic planning created the opportunity by pinpointing the critical detection gap — 55% of wildfires start in overlooked recreational areas — which led to their insight, ingeniously leveraging Canadians’ existing photo-sharing habits. This contribution shifted tentree from reactive reforestation to proactive prevention, adding distinct value by aligning brand purpose with a scalable, tech-driven solution.

“Following Wildfire” helped safeguard communities, support firefighters, and preserve ecosystems for
future generations.

The campaign analyzed 24,233 photos shared by Canadians, identifying and reporting 211 fires early. These interventions translated into the protection of 10,200+ acres of forest and an estimated $35M in fire suppression cost savings.

“Following Wildfire” generated 68M earned media impressions and helped tentree dominate the outdoors conversation, capturing 50%+ of all outdoors brand social mentions during the campaign, beyond more established competitors like The North Face, Patagonia, and REI.

Tentree saw an 85% increase in organic search volume, and even with the brand’s established legacy in environmental leadership, recorded a 62% rise in awareness as a “sustainable brand” among consumers familiar with the initiative.

Fire departments and environmental agencies lauded “Following Wildfire” as a scalable model for early detection, with experts like Tristan Landry, Head of Canada’s Environmental Agency, publicly endorsing its potential to be replicated globally.

Credits

tentree
Co-founder & CEO: Derrick Emsley
Senior Brand Director: Wendy Kubota

Dentsu Creative
CEO: Stephen Kiely
President & Chief Creative Officer: Jordan Doucette
Chief Strategy Officer: Rafik Belmesk
Chief Client Officer: Dimitra Georgakis
Executive Creative Director: Ryan Egan, Maxime Sauté
Associate Creative Director: Aaron Woolfson, Matt Smith
Art Director: Maxime Sauté
Copywriter: Ryan Egan
Designer: Maxime Sauté
Designer: Jihye Bang
SVP, Studio & Operations: Kristie Filipp
VP, Client Management: Josie Daga
Executive Producer: Cynthia Cyr
Director, Broadcast and Content: Rob Lazar
Account Manager: Cloe Boulianne
SVP, Communications: Kate Dobrucki
Director, Communications: Lisa Gamble
Brand Strategist: Libby Sutherland

iProspect
Chief Client Officer: Tracey Johnson
Group Account Director: Leona Hobbs
Senior Planner: Danika Smith

Amplifi
President, Media: Nicole Brown
SVP: Moira Gilderson
VP: Krista Furlano

Reflektor
CTO: Max Rusan
Lead Developer: Luc Palombo
Head of Production: Simon Conlin
Producer: Ryan Kelly
Creative Direction / User Interface Design: Glenn Catteeuw
Creative Developer: Rogier de Boevé
3D Production: Carlos Garcia
Front End Developer: Shiqi Wu
Project manager / Research: Koji Saeki

Cypher Audio
Design: John Black Production: Julie Neff

Saints Editorial
Editor: Nick Coleman
Producer: Phoebe Lorimer
Executive Producer: Mackenzie Goodwin
Darling Colour & VFX
Motion Graphics - James Reid
Online Producer - Will Culverwell

Grayson Music
Senior Producer - Nicholas Shaw
Executive Producer / Partner – Kelly McCluskey

Pomp & Circumstance
Creative Director, PR: Lindsay Mattick
Account Manager, PR: Jennifer Dunsmore
Account Coordinator, PR: Greer Rynax

EGS PR
President: Effie Giannou
Account Manager, PR: Jennifer Ahken