Timberland Launches Earthkeeper Heroes Widget Competition

Sept. 1, 2009 - PRLog -- Timberland, in partnership with Changents.com is launching the Earthkeeper Heroes Widget Competition as part of its ’09 Earthkeeper Heroes campaign. The contest is a Hero’s race to the first 100,000 downloads of their widget by November 1, 2009.

People around the world can show their support for a Timberland Earthkeeper Hero by downloading or “grabbing” the widget and placing it on their Facebook profile, MySpace page or personal website and rallying their friends to do the same. The widgets are mini-story feeds about what’s happening on the Hero’s mission—users can read Hero story updates, view new pictures and videos, and become part of their mission to make a positive impact on the environment.

Timberland will award a grass-roots publicity campaign to help the Earthkeeper Hero with the most supporters get on national TV to share their story as a champion for the environment. The Earthkeeper Heroes program is part of Timberland’s commitment to helping emerging environmental activists become the catalysts of environmental movements around the world.

The five Earthkeeper Hero widgets featured in the competition include:

Christopher Swain, on Earth Day 2009, dove into the frigid and dirty Atlantic ocean, beginning a 1,000 mile, 2-year swim from New England to Washington D.C. — an eco-expedition designed to find alternatives to “unhelpful human activities” (as Christopher likes to say) destroying our ocean habitats as a result of water pollution. The public can follow Christopher’s swim, communicate with him, and experience first hand what he sees while freestyling through water contaminated with algae blooms, oil slicks, trash, heavy metals, toxic chemicals, sewage and nuclear waste... not to mention container ships, rip tides, rain, snow, lightning, high winds and tiger sharks.

Sami Nerenberg and Nate Bastien (a.k.a. the “Impact Designers”) are creating break-through, environmentally friendly design solutions for impoverished and low-income communities. Nate is creating a ‘Street Pack’ for the homeless made entirely of scrap material otherwise headed to the landfill. Sami, one of the youngest teachers to run a program at the Rhode Island School of Design, is sending story dispatches from deep inside the urban jungle where she is designing high impact, green “makeovers” for environmentally-challenged homes as part of a community project with inner city youth.

Andrea Bakacs is harnessing the power of photography to deliver eco-messages. At just 29, Andrea is pointing her camera at amazing pockets of nature worth saving and a host of green projects sprouting from nooks and crannies across New York City. Ever seen Manhattan’s eco-friendly composting nuns? How about a farm complete with goats and chickens and cherry trees smack in the middle of the east village—on a rooftop? What about the green movement’s equivalent of graffiti artists—guerrilla gardeners? Andrea is taking the public along for a ride on her visual story of green NYC.

Cate Trotter (a.k.a. the “Green Insider”) is a 25-year-old sustainability trend-spotter and "greentrepreneur" with the inside track on who’s leading the environmental revolution and how to join them. Cate not only inspires individuals, but also advises businesses on how to go green. She is sharing stories on her journey to discover cutting-edge developments emerging from London’s “green scene” including environmentally friendly design break-throughs, eco-architectural feats, ethical fashion trends, green technology innovations, and Gen Y eco-conscious culture spanning from art to nightlife.

Mark Shearer and Nick Gardner (a.k.a. “Project Dirt”) have combined their green hearts and business smarts to develop a unique online community called Project Dirt. It connects eco-conscious individuals with down-and-dirty urban greening projects in London. With dozens of projects on the site and an estimated 2,000 greening community projects eager to get on Project Dirt, Mark and Nick are knee deep while sharing their urban greening adventures and asking the public for help along the way.

WHO


Changents.com to create Earthkeeper Heroes - a unique consumer engagement engine to "break" emerging eco-change agents onto the global environmental scene through an array of online and on-the-ground consumer engagement opportunities. Earthkeeper Heroes combines the evolving stories of dynamic environmental heroes with an interactive social media experience. The result is an platform that connects this generation’s most exciting agents of environmental change with people around the world who can help them. 2 Helix Design, a firm based in Los Angeles is responsible for designing the widgets and Gigya, is responsible for providing the platform and distribution to support social sharing of the application across the Internet.

Grab an Earthkeeper Hero Widget at http://changents.com/earthkeepers/widget.

CONTACT

THE TIMBERLAND COMPANY
Kate King
kking@timberland.com

CHANGENTS.COM
Nicole Anderson
Nicole@changents.com

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Changents connects exciting people who are changing the world - Change Agents - with the people who help them. The Changents social media platform empowers agents of change with tools that enable them to be discovered and supported by "Backers."