Pantone's Color of the Year draws attention to our colourful nature – and year after year their new colour becomes a driving force and inspiration for the creative industries, such as design and fashion. For 2019 Pantone picked Living Coral as the Color of the Year.

But corals are in real danger nowadays: the world has lost about 50% of coral reefs. However, 25% of sea fish species depend on coral reefs, that play crucial role in maintaining healthy marine ecosystems, supplying half the oxygen we breathe. Unfortunately, living corals are on the brink of extinction, and their future is in doubt.

We wanted to address this target audience, since they are powerful influencers and have a strong impact on younger generations. Our environmental conscious message raising awareness of endangered corals was amplified with the representatives of the design and fashion industry.

Inspired by Pantone's colour choice we created a shocking, realistic poster campaign to raise awareness of endangered corals. We released #keeplivingcoral, a campaign that recreates Pantone’s Living Coral visual, using garbage taken directly from the oceans: a contradiction that exposes the ugly truth, bringing this serious global problem into focus.

Inspired by Pantone's colour choice, we re-created the original Living Coral visual, but using garbage taken directly from the oceans. Trash placed against soft, pastel backgrounds transform the objects into an aesthetic experience – presenting a dramatic contradiction between the corals and their plastic polluted environment.

With the real-life plastic garbage combined with coral, shot in soft, diffused light our aim was to expose the ugly truth by creating a composition that is colourful and tragically beautiful at the same time.

Thus we created a shocking, realistic poster campaign to raise awareness of endangered corals, bringing this serious global problem into focus.

The campaign became an online phenomenon. People started creating posts about those visually stunning posters – and reacted to them by sharing with others. It was featured in the most important news portals and online magazines, with 50 M people reached, 760% increase in mentions and 137% increase in brand interaction.