The World’s Ugliest Lawn
REGION GOTLAND
In 2023 Region Gotland scaled its water-conserving ugly lawn initiative to a global contest. It generated an earned reach of 1.1 billion impressions, entries from around the world and made people question the norm of green lawns. The World’s Ugliest Lawn is now an annnual contest.
The summer of 2023 was the hottest ever recorded on Earth, and water availability is decreasing around the world.Gotland had decreased its water consumption the previous year by celebrating owners of ugly dry lawns and saw the need to scale the initiative globally.
Gotland launched The World’s Ugliest Lawn contest – a competition with the purpose of saving water globally by challenging the norm of green lawns.
Gotland joined forces with the Hollywood actress and environmentalist Shailene Woodley. Together they challenged the world to save water and share images of ugly dry lawns. In a recorded Zoom call with last year's winner of "Gotland's Ugliest Lawn" she challenged the world to save water and share images of ugly dry lawns.
The Swedish embassies in the USA and Australia published posts encouraging Americans and Australians to enter the contest. Ugly lawn entries were submitted from the USA, Germany, France, Australia, the UK, Canada, Croatia and Sweden.
In January 2024 an international jury announced the winner – Kathleen Murray in Tasmania. Leading international media reported on the initiative and the first-ever winner of The World’s Ugliest Lawn contest. For example: The Guardian, The Washington Post, CNN, CNN Arabic, BBC Breakfast, The Drew Barrymore Show on CBS, Forbes, New York Post, Have I Got News for You on BBC1, The Weather Channel, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Der Spiegel, Le Figaro, Le Parisien, Business Insider, Business Insider Africa, The Telegraph, CBC Radio, NPR Radio, The Sun, The West Australian, ABP Sanjah, New Dehli TV, Times Now, Hindustan Times, and many more… Media in Sweden and Gotland wrote articles about the success of the initiative.
The initiative has had an extensive impact:
It was featured on the start page of The Washington Post as ”Top Story”, in two WP articles with 950 reader comments, and in the WP newsletter ”Climate Coach”. According to the Guardian their two articles on The World’s Ugliest Lawn initiative were among the most widely read across multiple countries. The initiative has included in a Dutch school book, and if you type ”world’s ugliest” on Google, ”lawn” is the 9th suggestion for the third word.
Want to read more?
> Article in The Washington Post
> The Guardian Australia on Instagram
> Article in Frankfurter Allgemeine
> The webpage for the initiative
Awards
Shortlisted in the PR category of Cannes Lions. Silver in Spinn, Second round in One Show Green Pencil and a European shortlist in the ANDY Awards.
For more information, contact:
Johan Gustafsson
+46 70-632 90 20
