Recently the popular social media platform Instagram added a new feature called ‘Add Yours’ in which users can add their own content to a story that encourages friends or followers to contribute and add to the same ‘Add Yours’ sticker. Confused!? Learn more how it works by watching this video below from YouTuber Ben Leavitt.
Ben Leavitt's video on how the "Add Yours" Instagram Story feature works. Source: Ben Leavitt
What happened next?
It wasn’t long before an ‘Add Yours’ sticker went viral. If you were browsing your Instagram stories around early November of 2021 you may have noticed lots of pet photos with the sticker mentioning ‘We’ll plant 1 tree for every 1 picture’ which resulted in over 5 million people sharing pictures of their pets with the sticker. That’s a commitment to 5 million trees needing to be planted!
Who was behind it?
Eventually a company stepped up to claim responsibility for the sticker, Plant a Tree Co said, “We posted the new “Add Yours” story as a fun tree planting campaign where we can show off our awesome pets! We immediately realised the post would grow too big and that we didn’t have the resources to plant that many trees, so we deleted it 10 minutes later,” they wrote. You can see their full response here. As a result, Instagram suggested that they were looking into ways of making it clear who had started a thread in instances when the name is removed from an ‘Add Yours’ sticker, others suggested the whole thing was a scam. See some responses from the public below!
Why did the idea catch on?
There are different philosophies behind why social transmission occurs. Using Jonah Berger’s message based characteristics framework S.T.E.P.P.S., we can break down why this idea caught on using a couple of Berger’s key points.
Social currency - People like to share things that make them look good to others, by sharing the ‘We’ll plant 1 tree for every 1 picture’ it’s an easy way to show friends that you care about the environment to help buy social currency. Besides, who doesn’t love animal photos!?
Emotion - By people feeling like they are doing something positive about the environment it creates a positive emotion of excitement, when we care, we share!
Learn more about Jonah's S.T.E.P.P.S. theory as he talks about it in the YouTube video below.
Jonah Berger on his Contagious 'Why things catch on' book and S.T.E.P.P.S theory. Source: Simon & Schuster Books
So I’m curious, did you jump on this trend and share your own ‘We’ll plant 1 tree for every 1 picture’ sticker on your Instagram? Do you think Plant a Tree Co should be accountable for planting over 5 million trees? Let me know in the comments!
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