Subaru Loves the Earth

The United States loses roughly 36 million trees a year, and consumers have grown wary of greenwashing, so Subaru's Arbor Day Foundation tree giveaway risked being dismissed as another corporate pledge. As an automotive brand talking about the environment, Subaru of America faced extra skepticism, and social sentiment pointed Open Influence toward a clear conclusion: the Earth Month message needed proof of real action rather than advertising claims, showing trees actually changing hands at local retailers.

Open Influence put three mission-aligned creators inside the program, sending @farmernick, @chinesediscobaby and @thepeetes to film Subaru retailers as 100,000 free Arbor Day Foundation trees were distributed nationwide, and letting them tell it first-person. The creators, a gardener-environmentalist, an eco-focused advocate and a family account, produced Instagram Reels and Stories, TikTok and YouTube content across Earth Month 2025, paired with a two-week cross-platform paid amplification push.

Casting for credibility made the sustainability message harder to dismiss than brand-voiced advertising, and filming creators collecting trees at real dealerships gave audiences a concrete, low-effort behaviour to copy. Content ran on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube in Open Influence's channel mix. The campaign reports more than 18.9 million total impressions, over 999,400 engagements and 16.2K clicks, and won the Automotive category plus the Audience Honor at the 10th Shorty Impact Awards. All figures are self-reported from the award entry and the participating companies' own pages, none independently audited, and the tree totals are program-level results that cannot be attributed to the influencer content alone.