Situation

In October 2021, the UNDP launched the #DontChooseExtinction climate campaign with a video starring Frankie, an animated dinosaur. Frankie storms the United Nations and urges humanity to end fossil fuel subsidies. “Imagine if we spent hundreds of billions subsidizing giant meteors?” Frankie quips. Frankie’s speech became the most watched in UN history, aided by celebrity voice overs in 58 languages. It demonstrated the power of comedy to communicate an important—if grim—message.

Brief

The goal: expand the reach and extend the life of the #DontChooseExtinction campaign by bringing Frankie the Dino to life with a realistic dinosaur puppet and staging activations at global events and gatherings.

Objectives:

- Drive attention to the #DontChooseExtinction campaign by generating viral organic social content and earned media.

- Engage multigenerational, multicultural audiences not typically targeted by environmental messaging.

- Create an inspiring environmental influencer–a lovable character who can galvanize public solidarity and motivate action.

Frankie the Dino knows a few things about extinction, which is why he took the podium at the UN to urge humanity to take action to end the climate crisis and avoid our own extinction. We wanted to take Frankie’s message to new audiences by bringing this animated mascot to life with a realistic, life-sized puppet. The goal was to establish Frankie the Dino as a “real-life” public figure and influencer, using humor and spectacle to inspire environmental advocacy and rally climate action.

Frankie took his message on the road, popping up at major global gatherings, like Climate Week NYC, COP 27 in Sharm El-Sheikh, and the YouthConnekt Africa Summit in Kigali, Rwanda. Frankie spoke on panels, appeared on television, visited preschools, marched in climate protests, danced with youth leaders, engaged with political officials, and generally disrupted everyday life wherever he traveled with his playful wake-up call to humanity.

Target audience(s):

- Dignitaries and political leaders

- Youth and students

- Multinational public

- Environmental influencers/professionals

Approach

Frankie’s activations were anchored by participation in major events where he engaged with participants and spoke about his campaign via a dinosaur “translator”. Alongside these appearances, Frankie took to the streets in the cities he visited, improvising “one-dino” climate marches in busy public spaces with a protest sign that drove onlookers to the #DontChooseExtinction campaign website. Crowds swarmed the dinosaur looking for selfies, and Frankie’s impromptu street protests often led to media interviews.

The campaign also leveraged the UNDP’s extensive network of country offices to engage local schools and recreation centers in host cities. Frankie entertained students while offering teachers a playful opportunity to discuss challenging environmental issues. Frankie’s social media platforms capitalized on the virality of these appearances to further develop Frankie’s voice, character, and identity online.

Implementation

- Collaborated with a manufacturer to create a custom dinosaur costume identical to the animated Frankie.

- Established a core execution team to manage activation performance, logistics, and content creation.

- Coordinated with UNDP country offices to identify education strategies, optimal activation locations, and local media and influencer opportunities.

- Synced live activations with a remote team that created and posted content in real time during activations and managed social and earned media engagement.

Timeline and Placement:

May 2022: Times Square, New York

June 2022: CannesLions 2022

August 2022: UN SDG Media Summit, New York

September 2022: Climate Week NYC (YouTube Creators Summit, The Nest Summit,

and the Today Show)

October 2022: YouthConnekt Africa, Kigali, Rwanda

November 2022: Cairo and COP27, Egypt

December 2022: UN Biodiversity COP15, Montreal, Canada

January 2023: World Economic Forum, Davos, Switzerland

April 2023: Earth Week in Stockholm, Sweden; Earth Day in Dallas, TX

Reviving a Campaign

The #DontChooseExtinction campaign video has achieved more than 2.2 billion views. But after an initial surge, Frankie’s social media traffic dropped from more than 2 million impressions in October 2021 to 11,241 impressions in February 2022.

Generating traffic entirely with owned and earned media – and with zero ad dollars behind the campaign – the “real life” Frankie drove:

- 9.5 billion digital impressions

- 4.2 million digital engagements

- 239,000 average monthly impressions

- 11,000 average monthly engagements

- 4000 media mentions in 98 countries

Building Influence

Media appearances established Frankie the Dino as a globally recognized public figure. Climate influencers like Greta Thunberg and Leonardo DiCaprio retweeted Frankie on social media. Frankie was interviewed in Arabic, French, German, Spanish, Kinyarwanda, and English. The 4000+ media outlets that covered Frankie include:

NBC Today

Al Arabiya

AFP

The Guardian

SBS Australia

Weather Channel

Reuters

Sky News Arabia