Sea Shepherd is a non-profit organisation that aims to end both the destruction of habitat and slaughter of wildlife in the world’s oceans. In order to do so, they must convey the magnitude of current ocean pollution levels to the public to instigate a change in human behavior. Our campaign targets people ages 18 to 34, who generally exhibit especially poor recycling habits. In the U.S., this group recycles at a rate of 15% less than older groups. To reach these people, we lean heavily into social media, realizing that 81% of millennials regularly seek out visual content and 59% say their favorite websites use amazing graphics. We decided to show this ugly reality in a esthetical and poetic way that we know will capture this demographic’s attention.

We wanted the film to look like a colorful piece of art in the beginning, something that quickly catches attention and stands out on social media. In the later shots of the film we transition to a more serious look & feel and the viewer then understands it is an underwater scenario. The challenge was to add emotion to the animals, so the viewer feels related to them and has an emotional reaction to their struggle in the plastic. At the end we deliver a serious message and create a mindset of sustainable usage of plastic.

The Plastic Ocean campaign provided Sea Shepherd with ample social engagement and press coverage, raising awareness of the organization’s key messages surrounding ocean habitat pollution and wildlife slaughter. On their owned channels, the content has garnered impressive engagement – quickly becoming the organization’s best-performing YouTube video of 2018, the most popular Instagram video of 2018, and the top Tweet posted in April. With almost 40K shares on social media, 206K views on Facebook and Youtube, and 111 pieces of press coverage, the Plastic Ocean has generated over 1.78M views. But most importantly we created a mindset of sustainable plastic usage.