Stand With Owners
Questions & Answers
Tell us about your business, how it started, how it’s going and what you offer.
Good Planet Project is an environmental media company that focuses on sharing stories about our earth and strategies to save it. Built around the social enterprise model, the project works as a marketing agency that helps to tell client’s environmental stories, only the impact extends beyond that initial client. We take the earnings from paying clients and use it to build marketing materials for environmental non-profits who can not afford the same. In addition, the marketing material is featured on our website and social as a Good Planet profile, further bringing attention to their cause.
The project all started when the founder, Dylan Leeder, realized he was losing the passion and meaning he once had for his craft as a photographer. After spending years working in advertising he found he had drifted far from the original reasons he took up photography and creative projects in the first place; to tell impactful stories and create beautiful visuals. To re-spark these initial passions he created Good Planet Project. The project started as a means for him to combine his passion for environmentalism, his desire to tell meaningful stories, and excitement towards great visuals. Fortunately it worked, and that spark is brighter than ever.
The business is off to a strong start. Having spent the last year creating content and stories, building the brand and website, and creating a small passionate team, it’s already got great momentum and is creating a buzz in our community.
The business is deliberately starting small but has large plans; there are no limits to the approaches we hope to take to tell environmental stories and uplift the people doing good for our planet.
How has your business transformed this past year? How has technology played a role?
It’s been an exciting year; we decided to go ‘all in’ in August of 2020, and built a 1 year plan that lead up to the launch mid-September. Over the last year we have worked with various small businesses, writers, content creators, mentors, and individuals to build the company for launch with a runway to ensure it’s early success.
Some highlights include a complete re-brand with the help of a local boutique branding agency, the website build, the creation of a three piece exploration of The Waterton Biosphere Reserve, the creation of 4+ months worth of content to release post-launch, relationships built with various professionals within the industry, and, most importantly, the building of the solid business structure that can support the growth of the project for years to come.
The Good Planet Project wouldn’t exist without technology and our ability to easily communicate nationwide. Aside from the obvious use of cameras, cell phones, and computers for the creation of the visuals, the project wouldn’t exist without the ability to frequently communicate with organizations, creatives, and environmentalists across the country. The Good Planet Project is proud of its ability to work with professionals from all corners of Canada; although based in a small town in the foothills of Alberta, we have explored video projects in Ottawa, interviewed environmentalists in Halifax and Newfoundland, and discussed project growth with creatives in Vancouver. Technology has allowed us to be borderless when it comes to sharing the inspiring environmental work happening in our country.
How has your business made an impact on your local community?
This is our favourite part! The project is built with the goal of doing as much good as possible. So much so that we have created what we call our ‘Win-Win’ approach.
When Good Planet Project takes on a new client we always approach the project with our ‘win-win’ approach. Simply put, we strive to have everything we do become a win for everyone involved. We always consider how we can maximize the benefit for the many people involved in the work that we do, and how we can best leverage the opportunity to provide a long lasting, sustainable and positive impact.
This is easily achieved through a few guiding principles, like trying our best to match industry rates for our contractors. We also hold ourselves to a high standard of ethics, and ensure accountability and transparency within all stakeholder relationships, especially with our non-profit partners.
Let’s use our ‘profiles’ as an example. While we wrap our heads around the best way to tell the subject’s story, we’re also looking at the process from the perspective of an art director or marketing professional. Beyond just bringing attention to the subject's cause, we also approach each piece with the hopes of providing deliverables that the subject can use beyond their experience with Good Planet Project. For example, the seemingly simple profile on local startup, aGRO, delivered them with 104 professional, high quality photographs for their marketing needs.
The impact can be wide ranging - from the individuals we work with to create the pieces, to the clients who elect to use a social enterprise to help tell their environmental story and in turn support other nonprofits, to the non-profits and small businesses we profile and provide marketing material to, and ultimately, the planet as a whole by leveraging those doing good for it and inspiring others to do the same.
How can Canadians support owners like you?
Put simply, the best way to support Good Planet Project, and in turn, support environmental non-profits, is to hire us for their marketing needs. As mentioned previously, by hiring us the support goes much further than the business; by supporting Good Planet Project Canadians would be supporting the environmental movement as a whole.
Canadians can also support Good Planet Project by exploring the content we create and sharing it with others.
As much as we love going into the details of the collaborations, content creation, client advantages and our ‘win-win’ approach, the goal is to also share the environmental stories we create. The project is built to share stories about our earth and strategies to save it, to give hope and inspiration to our viewers so that they can find ways they can make a difference in their own lives.
We all know that the planet is at risk; the headlines, conversations, and natural occurrences make this clear, but the Good Planet Project chooses to take an optimistic approach and share the inspiring stories of the everyday folks who have decided to do something about it. The best thing Canadians can do is understand that not all hope is lost and to tell their friends we can make a difference.