Our Challenge: Tooth ? Tusk. Clear the linguistic misconception and ban Ivory Trade

The Creative idea: To change the law by changing the language: co-creating a new word for Ivory.

Though an integrated PR campaign, we engaged with the people of Hong Kong, informing and educating them about the origins of Ivory and how linguistic misunderstanding stood in the way and fuelled the Ivory trade.

This was an idea that was designed not only to lead to an engaging piece of communication, but also to generate powerful PR and natural advocacy from all those who would be involved - Youth 18-29-year-olds, primary and secondary school students, Journalists, Legislative Council members, WWF Corporate and individual donors by empowering them to give “Ivory” its own unique Chinese character.

Why a new word for Ivory? Through numerous studies and reports we found out that 70% of Chinese people believe that tusks fall off naturally because the word for ivory in Chinese is literally translated to “elephant tooth”. This has led to the deep misconception that ivory can be harvested without killing elephants.

When we talked to some people and told them how Ivory was harvested, almost all of them said they would not buy Ivory based products.

This is further evident through research data amongst past buyers of ivory, over 50% stated they wouldn't buy ivory again after learning elephants had to die for tusk extraction.

Two things stood in their way: linguistic misconception leading to false understanding of how Ivory is sourced.

We would need to rectify both in order to meet our key objective of 60,000 petition signatures in time to lobby the Ivory Trade ban. That meant capturing the imagination of our four key audiences: Hong Kong Cantonese speakers aged 18-29, school students (both Primary & Secondary), Journalists (to get PR coverage and spread the word to every Hong Kong citizen) and Legislative Council members with strong influence over the Chief Executive

Did the idea work? Yes it did.

We delivered over 66,000 petition signatures to the Chief Executive C.Y. Leung days before the Policy Address influencing the total ban. HongKongers created over 9000 characters, with one character ultimately chosen by an expert panel.

'The Last Word’ campaign was a powerful Pro-Bono effort that delivered great results in short span of time. Within 3 months we were able to mobilize the public in support of elephant conservation and to end the ivory trade in Hong Kong. With hard evidence on how local ivory trade was fuelling the ongoing poaching of elephants in Africa, and engaging public and school children in a culturally sensitive way through calligraphy, we secured more than 66,000 signature petitions and submiited to Hong Kong’s Chief Executive. With such overwhelming public support, he quickly committed his government to closing down Hong Kong’s Ivory market.

- Maggie Lo - Assitant Director, Marketing

And at the end of the 3-month long campaign, we had received over 90,000 petition signatures, well in excess of our 60,000- signatures target.