BBC One Countryfile launched their two-year project Plant Britain to help combat climate change, help wildlife, and improve our well being. The goal is to plant 750,000 trees in two years, and encourage the planting of various fruits, vegetables and flowers as well.
Plant Britain is an interactive map that allows users to contribute to the campaign by recording what they have planted on the website.
Hitting 1 million
After the campaign going live in December 2020, in 7 months we’ve managed to hit 1 million plant entries!
How did this success come about?
We had previously worked with BBC Creative on the successful BBCThree The Rap Map Game UK: Rap Map and were then recommended to the Countryfile team.
BBC Creative came to us with the campaign planned out and wanted a digital home for it, some kind of ‘totaliser’, and some kind of map. They came to the right place.
What did we do?
Our first task was to have an internal catch-up with the team, brainstorming ideas and how we can deliver a top-level creative approach. This followed a creative session with the BBC Creative team to narrow down and refine the idea slightly into creating a deeper proposal.
Key was to consider the volume of likely entrants, the information that would be captured, the workflow of the team processing it and the longevity of the project (designed to last a year).
During the design process, one of the vital elements is not only how the website will look and feel through desktop and mobile devices, but how it would deliver the best through the visual storytelling that would be featured on the TV programme.
From several client meetings, we developed the idea of how to segment the map, create a sense of friendly competition between regions and adding the big totaliser. Whilst having similarities with the Rap Map in terms of being an interactive map and collecting data from a smaller number of applicants, Plant Map would be essentially be collecting ‘mass data’.
In terms of the development, the first task was to investigate the following:
- Backend data capture and storage
- Front end map interface
- Data display
During the development process, this took a flexible lightweight approach using the dynamic building to allow us to be very flexible with the build, we wrote a blog post about our approach to this using AWS amplify. We then set it up to be able to simulate data building up, which we used to create stock footage to be broadcast on Countryfile.
How did Team Joi get involved?
It’s been incredible to be a part of this journey and to know that our contribution is going towards combating climate change and improving the well-being of others. We didn’t stop there, here at Joi Polloi we jumped at the opportunity to get on board with the campaign and started ‘TeamJoiGetPlanting’.
Over the last 6 months, TeamJoi wanted to get involved with the two-year project of the plant map and we decided to make this a small team project. First, we all decided what plants we would like to plant and then from this, our team started sending progression images.
From flowers, trees, vegetables and fruits, our team were planting ridiculous amounts of plants. This was a small project that had taken place during the lockdown and improved the wellbeing of the team.
The campaign doesn’t stop there, if you want to get involve and plant your own plants, please do at PlantBritain.co.uk.
