Case Study: Trash Isles
Every year eight million tons of plastic is dumped in the ocean. According to the WEF, if we keep producing and dumping plastic at this rate, by 2050 there will be more plastic in the ocean than fish.
The brief
Online publisher Lad Bible have a mantra "with great reach comes great responsibility". And with social followers numbering in the tens of millions, the brand certainly has ‘great reach'. So, in 2017, having just completed a campaign about men's mental health, they wanted to turn their attention to the environment.
Having established a partnership with the Plastic Oceans Foundation, Lad Bible approached AMVBBDO with a brief to raise awareness of the impact plastic was having on our ocean. The results would need to highlight the scale of the problem to the public and get governments to act.
The insights
Although this issue has subsequently had widespread attention, at the time it was only beginning to rise to the surface. The team at AMVBBDO were unaware, say Lossgott and Hulley: "We had no idea how big the problem was. Back when we were briefed and started thinking of ideas there was very little coverage or information about the topic."
The team found a study by Oxford Dictionary that indicated that people associated the word ‘plastic' with words like cup, bottle, bag and toy. There was no association with the environmental impact plastic was having. "We needed to change this," explain Hulley and Lossgott, "we needed to make people aware of what plastic pollution is doing to our oceans."
Specifically, the team found out about the ‘Great Pacific Garbage Patch', an area of floating micro plastics in the ocean, estimated to be as large as 1.6m sq km.
"The saying ‘out of sight out of mind ‘could not be more applicable than with this issue. " say Lossgott and Hulley, explaining that the vast majority of plastic in the ocean is thousands of miles from land. "We realised we had to make the invisible visible, to find a way to ensure it could not be ignored."
The team then discovered the Rio Declaration on the Environment and Development from 1992, and it was from this legislation that the idea was born: if the trash island was declared a country, then this agreement would oblige other countries to clean it.
The production
The youth audience in 2017 suffers from a degree of ‘charity fatigue'; they are regularly exposed to hundreds of causes and sponsorship requests, especially on social media. So to reach them, something special would be required. With that in mind, the team set about establishing all the elements of a legitimate country.
Banknotes, passports and a flag were all designed, with world-class production partners such as The Mill on animations, Jelly London on illustrations, and James Radford working on the music. The launch film was produced featuring cult British soap opera celebrity Ross Kemp. It proved a surprising enough collaboration to cause the video to get shared widely.
Celebrities began to hear about the campaign, leading to Dame Judie Dench being declared Queen and John Cena the Secretary of Defence – "He was self-elected but you don't disagree with a man of that size" laugh Lossgott and Hulley.
The momentum meant that creators came forward to offer their skills. A set of stamps was created by Niko Courtelis of The Portland Stamp Company, poets asked to be Laureate and even furniture maker Rik Ruigrok offered to make and hand deliver a table of recycled plastic for meetings.
The launch
A letter was sent to the United Nations to declare the Trash Isles an official country. This was followed by the launch of the Trash Isles Hub on LAD Bible homepage, a micro-site dedicated to stories about the environment. This was to be the centrepiece of the buzz, and where the public could sign up to become a citizen of The Trash Isles via a change.org petition.
The impact
The reaction from the public upon learning about the island of trash was one of shock. The campaign capitalised on this and converted it to action by asking the public to sign a change.org petition. The campaign became change.org's fastest-ever growing petition. Eventually, 220,000 people became citizens, making the country larger than 21 existing countries, including Liechtenstein, Saint Lucia and Seychelles.
This helped add further press coverage and snowball the campaign. How did the team involved feel? "To be honest we were taken back by how much noise The Trash Isles was making, we soon found ourselves doing interviews for papers in Japan on how to create a country or talking on shows in Columbia about Al Gore being our first citizen."
This led to 50m video views, coverage on CNN, Fox News and Reuters, and earned media reach of half a billion. According to AMVBBDO, there was more conversation around the term ‘plastic pollution' in the three months after the campaign launch then there was in the entire year before it.
At the D&AD Awards in 2018, the campaign was recognised across the board, with a breath-taking total of 10 Pencils, including Yellows for Branding, Media and PR.
Meanwhile, at the United Nations, this attention started to have an impact, and the issue climbed the political agenda. As of the last United Nations conference, 193 countries have pledged to tackle the global crisis of plastic in the oceans.