The Great Barrier Reef is the largest living structure on the planet and 1 of 7 natural wonders of the world. It is made up of more than 980 islands, 600 types of coral and is home to 25% of all known marine species.

BUT it is under sever threat at the hands of climate change. Australians have lost hope.

A passionate group at the Great Barrier Reef Foundation (GBRF) are solving the most complex and challenging problems facing the survival of the Reef. The funds they raise are directed at 100+ projects with large-scale impact – to regenerate the reef and build its resilience.

The GBRF can’t turn the fate of the reef on their own. They need to rally support.

With a budget of under $150,000 the task in our first year was simply to let Australian’s know that change was possible.

Our three key personas covered almost 60% of Australia’s population and our budget was less than 5% of other large charities in Australia.

Armchair environmentalists didn’t know why they could trust GBRF, and Good Citizens simply hadn’t noticed them. These personas needed to be our focus in the first year.

Blockers to support were scepticism, and the noise of so many other charities. Emotional enablers were stories of change, and proof of impact. Key to connection were the iconic beautiful images of the reef and marine life. Both audiences had a connection with news media.

“The Reef Impact Story”.

An editorial and content partnership with News Corp Australia.

1. Engage with visuals – leverage the passion

2. Maximise reach across multiple platforms

3. Tell the foundation story – real results

NewsCorp specifically built a campaign response team from 4 divisions to join the agency/client team to ensure all content aligned with the brief and storytelling vision.

Nine long form stories were written by journalists and editors, 28 separate pieces of content were executed and distributed across print, digital and social platforms of The Australian and news.com.au.

The 3 month campaign covered

1. Hope for the reef

2. An extra 640,000 turtles

3. Raine Island revival

4. Roadmap to rescuing the reef

Good citizens saw interactive digital stories on news.com.au that were visually immersive, demonstrating significant change delivered by the foundation. Swipe technology allowed readers to reveal before and after images. 360-degree images meant readers could navigate the reef landscape themselves to see the difference. The impact story was clear and easy to comprehend.

Armchair environmentalists read long form stories in The Australian featuring GBRF projects and proof of measurable difference.

Phenomenal business results

• Year on year NPS growth from +15 to +43 (a 28 point lift!)

• Year on year reputation pulse lifted +5.7 to 81.4%

• Positive sentiment shift in GBRF social media pages

• Awareness tracking research will go into market Q2 2021

Unsurprising when you understand the media results...

The campaign had incredibly high levels of engagement, driven by the use of beautiful imagery, credible content supported by science, written by respected journalists and editors, further amplified by high levels of digital interactivity.

• The two premium interactive articles reached over 68,000+ unique readers

• Average reading time was 2m27s per article (20% higher than benchmark)

• 17% of readers interacted with the digital content (site average <1%)

• 1,109,314 completed video views

• A minor budget extended six-fold to sustain a national campaign for 3

months, providing essential scale.

• The Australian received several Letters-To-The-Editor