Smokey Bear
Voicing the longest-running PSA campaign in U.S. history.
Impact Area
What We Did
For 15 years, HelpGood voiced Smokey Bear online, providing social media strategy, content production, and community management services to the campaign.
300m
Media Impressions
10m
website visits per year
5.2m
Bear Hugs
The challenge
Most brands might hibernate after 80 years, but Smokey Bear is a timeless American icon, and he’s needed now more than ever. More Americans are moving closer to the wildland urban interface, and climate change is increasing the intensity, size, and number of wildfires. With nearly 9 out of 10 wildfires caused by humans, the U.S. Forest Service, National Association of State Foresters, and the Ad Council challenged HelpGood to help Smokey inspire a new generation of Americans to act more responsibly with fire.
Our solution
We decided on a simple rule to guide our strategy—put our beloved bear everywhere. During our tenure, we grew Smokey Bear’s total social pawprint by almost 2,000% to 550,000 fans. We keep memorable content flowing to educate captive audiences continuously. We facilitated Smokey’s appearance at hundreds of state fairs, livestream from SXSW, float in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, and travel to the International Space Station with NASA.
It was an honor to grow Smokey’s legacy of preventing wildfires.
Everywhere Smokey goes is a moment, and it’s been our honor to grow his legacy of preventing wildfires since 1944.
#OnlyYou
Our real-time response strategy resulted in billions of earned media impressions. Whether Smokey was inserting himself into Pharrell’s Grammy Ranger Hat or joining his friends in BarbieLand, he was always welcomed to the party.
