Hyundai's Tree Correspondents lets trees file climate dispatches via AI — 2 Cannes Golds

Hyundai's IONIQ Forest reforestation program reached two milestones — 10 years and one million trees planted across 13 regions — yet only about 5% of climate coverage mentions deforestation. FCB New York was asked to make the milestone matter and push deforestation onto the news agenda.

Give trees a voice: sensors plus a custom LLM turn IONIQ Forest data into first-person news dispatches written by the trees themselves.

METER Group sensors on trees in Brazil, Czechia and South Korea streamed real-time soil moisture, photosynthesis and climate data; a chain of LLMs mapped that data to emotional states and drafted first-person 'reports', which human editors fact-checked, tuned and published on TreeCorrespondents.com with sources disclosed. A brand film amplified the dispatches, and the project was built transparently — explaining its process, data and editorial system — to avoid reading as fake journalism.

The campaign drew over 86 million YouTube views and won two Gold Lions and one Silver Lion in Digital Craft at Cannes 2025, plus a Grand LIA, two Golds and a Bronze at the London International Awards. A second round of dispatches followed in July 2025 from a Silver Fir in Czechia, a Juçara Palm in Brazil and a Tulip Tree in South Korea.

In 2025 Hyundai's IONIQ Forest initiative hit two milestones: ten years of reforestation and its one-millionth tree planted across 13 regions on three continents. But planting trees, FCB New York argued, wasn't enough — only about 5% of climate coverage mentions deforestation, so the driver of warming was going unreported. The agency's question: what if the trees could speak for themselves?

The answer was Tree Correspondents, an AI-driven system that turns trees into data-enhanced storytellers. METER Group installed live sensors on trees in Hyundai's IONIQ Forests in Brazil, South Korea and Czechia, capturing soil moisture, photosynthesis, sun exposure and local climate in real time. A bespoke chain of large language models mapped that data to emotional states — scarcity, abundance, stress, comfort — and drafted first-person dispatches, as if the tree were a journalist reporting from the front line of its own ecosystem.

Human editorial oversight kept the work credible: a journalist editor, ecological advisors from Biomimicry 3.8, and FCB's team fact-checked and tuned each article, balancing scientific accuracy with emotional resonance. To avoid blurring journalism and fiction during a press trust crisis, the project published its methodology and linked every claim in each tree's report to its source, inviting readers to inspect how the narratives were built.

The campaign was viewed more than 86 million times on YouTube, and at Cannes Lions 2025 it won two Gold Lions and one Silver Lion in Digital Craft — alongside Hyundai's 'Night Fishing' Grand Prix — followed by a Grand LIA and multiple Golds at the London International Awards. A second round of dispatches from a Czech Silver Fir, a Brazilian Juçara Palm and a Korean Tulip Tree launched in July 2025, extending the idea into an ongoing editorial program.

It solves a real reporting gap: deforestation has no embedded correspondents, so the campaign put credible witnesses — trees — where journalism couldn't go.

The storytelling was grounded in live sensor data and human editorial review, so an AI novelty read as trustworthy journalism rather than marketing fluff.

It reframed a brand milestone (one million trees) as the launch of a continuing platform, not a one-off ad, and gave the brand a permanent role in climate discourse.

Radical transparency — published methodology, source-linked articles — turned the trust question into a feature of the idea.

Give an underreported issue a credible first-person witness: real sensor data plus editorial oversight made an AI stunt read as journalism, not marketing.

Tree Correspondents became a widely cited example of AI used for environmental storytelling, discussed from Cannes juries to Hyundai's own brand journal, where ecologist David de Rothschild wrote a first-person essay on the campaign's effect. Hyundai kept the program running with new tree correspondents and used it to anchor the IONIQ Forest's anniversary and its 'Progress for Humanity' purpose, showing how a CSR initiative can graduate from planting trees to shaping how climate stories get told.