Change the law by changing the language: Co-creating a new word for ivory.

We invited Hong Kongers to give “ivory” its own unique Chinese characters. A new word that would clearly differentiate “tooth” from “tusk” and communicate that buying ivory cost an elephant its life.

“The Last Word” was a digitally-driven public education, content creation and petition drive effort in one. We invited public submissions for a more accurate word for ivory, judged by an expert academic and artist panel. The new word chosen comprised “elephant” + a brand new character which blended “heart” and “tooth”, emphasizing the critical nature of tusk to an elephant’s life.

Petition signatures were collected throughout this education and submission process. Media coverage of the campaign was core to raising our audience’s awareness of the issue. Presentation of the final petition lobbied the Government to announce new legislation banning the ivory trade in Hong Kong.

WWF school programs in November’15 engaged teachers, students and parents supported by a homework assignment to create a new word for ivory.

Young adults were targeted through Facebook content including a video in December’15 of our campaign ambassador, successful Olympian diver Guo Jingjing (2000-2004-2008 Gold medallist), inviting word submissions and petition signatures.

A microsite gathered petition signatures and new word submissions on a digital sketchpad.

Tailored media stories were pitched throughout November-March, targeting education, lifestyle and environmental editors. WWF made direct political representations to identified legislators.

In February’16, our panel of linguists, education experts and artists chose the new word for ivory, one that means tusk, not tooth.

We are submitting the word now to Chinese dictionaries, ensuring official acceptance of the character in the Chinese language to permanently impact Hong Kong attitudes to ivory.

In January’16 the Chief Executive of HK, C.Y. Leung, announced a total ivory trade ban in Hong Kong. This represented complete success against the awareness and legislation objective.

Legislation without educating and changing public attitudes would have been a hollow victory however, potentially even driving the ivory trade further underground.

We received over 8,000 new Chinese character submissions and our final petition count was over 70,000, beating the 60,000 target. This result was fuelled by significant media outreach which achieved 5.9 million impressions, covering 80% of the Hong Kong population.

In post-campaign research over 50% of past ivory buyers now stated they wouldn’t repurchase after learning the trade killed elephants.

Empowering people with the facts and allowing them to co-create the solution permanently changed Hong Kong people’s attitudes for now and generations to come, potentially saving the last remaining elephants from extinction.