Natuurmonumenten
culture
strategy
Feb 2020
Story: Natuurmonumenten
Cool soil between your fingers. A sudden hush in the trees. The kind of quiet that makes you feel part of something bigger. Natuurmonumenten exists to protect those moments for everyone. The question was deeper than any campaign: how do you pass that love on, so a first spark becomes a lifelong bond, generation after generation?
Natuurmonumenten
Picture this: the smell of wet earth after rain, the sudden hush under tall trees, the way a five-year-old freezes in place the second a woodpecker starts work. Natuurmonumenten has been quietly protecting those moments for more than a century. The question on the table wasn't whether Dutch nature is worth protecting; it was bigger and a little more awkward. How do you hand the love of nature from one generation to the next, without it calcifying into an institution people admire from a safe distance?
Because a beloved brand with a rich history carries a peculiar risk: it starts being treated like a monument rather than a movement. Plenty of warm feelings, slowly less relevance. Plenty of thank-yous at the gala, fewer new members at the gate.
Listening to the whole ecosystem
We didn't start in the boardroom. We started where the work actually happens: with staff, volunteers, long-standing members, and a deliberately stubborn slice of people who had no connection with Natuurmonumenten at all. A strategy for "everyone" built only from insiders turns into a strategy for insiders.
The method on the table was 23plusone, our science-based approach that maps the 24 emotional drivers behind why people choose, join, and stay. Run a whole ecosystem through the same lens and something useful happens: the drivers that keep lighting up point to the actual heart of the brand, not the version everyone hoped was true. Not a vibe. A pattern. Testable, comparable, and hard to argue with once it's on the table.
From that pattern we distilled a purpose and a set of core values that fit the organisation as it really is, not as an old brochure once described it. A brand heart, written with people rather than at them.
From monument to movement
The outcome is a brand and portfolio strategy built for the long haul, in which Natuurmonumenten and its children's programme OERRR stop politely co-existing and start quietly reinforcing each other. The logic is almost embarrassingly simple: a first muddy adventure as a child, a first membership as an adult, a first legacy gift much later in life. One bond, nurtured for a lifetime.
The brand heart doesn't live in a binder. It shows up in the way decisions get made, the way campaigns get briefed, the way a forester and a marketer end up in the same conversation without anyone translating. Culture as quiet infrastructure.
Curious how to turn love into lifelong loyalty?
If you're leading a heritage brand that needs to stay dear and stay relevant, let's run the 23plusone lens over your full ecosystem. Members, colleagues, and the people who haven't heard of you yet. One shared heart, a clearer portfolio, and a strategy the people on the ground actually recognise themselves in.
Reach out to Kim or Alexander if you're looking for something similar