• by Les Luchter , March 30, 2022

Last year, Cloud Paper, which offers D2C subscriptions for bamboo toilet paper and paper towels, marked April, the month of Earth Day, with an April Fool’s-type social media campaign. “Flushparency” allowed people to “choose a forest for your bum,” saying that “cutting down the Boreal forest will get you the softest tissue.” A follow-up video then revealed that bamboo is actually a better option than wood.

This year, in a campaign launching on April Fool’s Day itself, the brand is a lot more serious.

“Free the Trees,” a contest backed by a two-month-long marketing campaign, is taking aim against deforestation as part of the brand’s efforts to save 22,000 trees in 2022, more than doubling the number it says it rescued last year.

Anyone who purchases a Cloud Paper subscription  in April or May -- or existing subscribers who make a purchase -- will be entered into the contest, with a grand prize of a lifetime subscription, and a $1,500 donation in the winner’s name to One Tree Planted, American Forests, World Wildlife Fund or Oceanic Global. A second-prize winner will get a year’s free subscription, and a $500 charitable contribution, and a third-prize winner a three-month subscription with a $500 donation.

Cloud Paper will also provide allsubscribers with a #FreeTheTrees Spotify playlist of 22 jazz and classical songs “known to stimulate plant growth.” Songs include the aptly titled “Raindrops” and “Stormy Weather” -- and the perhaps unaptly titled ”I Can’t Get Started.”

The company said it will plant one tree for every “like” the playlist receives. It will also send a Free The Trees T-shirt to anyone who orders on Earth Day, April 22. 

Driving the message home, the Cloud Paper campaign will use paid social ads and Google ads, as well as email and organic social. The campaign was created in-house in partnership with Little Voice Public Relations.

Cloud Pape also includes a Tree Tracker on its home page, showing Free the Trees campaign results in real time, including trees saved by the brand this year and trees saved by the brand overall.

Founded in 2019, Cloud Paper’s backers include Robert Downey Jr. and his Footprint Coalition Ventures Fund, Gwyneth Paltrow, Mark Cuban, Jeff Bezos’ Expedition fund., and Ashton Kutcher’s SOUNDWaves.

As a sponsor of Earth Day Initiative, SOUNDWaves managing partner Katherine Keating and Cloud Paper co-founder Ryan Fritsch will run a Twitch-streamed session about deforestation and tree-free options at the virtual Earth Day Festival 2022 on April 21.