Volvo as a company has always had sustainability at its heart – describing itself as the car for people who care about other people. Our brief was to create content for Volvo’s Sky Atlantic partnership, by highlighting the true story of an inspiring individual working hard to promote a crucial area of sustainability – and make the content compelling enough to compete on an equal footing with Sky’s own content.

The objective was to raise awareness of ocean sustainability in the UK, and support Volvo’s brand purpose of promoting more sustainable lifestyles as well as helping support Tom Franklin in his quest to create the next generation of ocean guardians.

We wanted to put the spotlight on an individual who was tackling the issue of ocean sustainability, using long-form documentary to follow this person on a journey to understand the true impact and importance of educating the next generation. The fact that 1 in 5 children in the UK have never seen the ocean, allowed us to show the gravity, as well as the urgency with which we all need to know and understand how to protect our oceans before it's too late.

Volvo has been making new commitments to ocean sustainability through a variety of initiatives, battling plastic pollution on several fronts. We needed a more emotive way to show the urgency of the issue. ‘The Unseen Ocean’ became part of Volvo’s award winning film series in partnership with Sky Atlantic, using long-form film that would allow us to sit credibly in the context of the very high profile content on Sky Atlantic. We also needed to reveal a layer of British society, in which one in five UK children have never seen the sea. We committed to being the first brand to put a spotlight to this terrifying statistic, engaging viewers on an emotional level.

‘The Unseen Ocean’, is the powerful true story about a school teacher with a mission to turn inner-city kids into the future guardians of the world’s oceans. ‘One in five UK children have never seen the sea’. The destiny of the ocean now lies in the hands of a generation who have no connection with it. Tom Franklin knew he had to try and do something about it before it was too late. The film features children who had never seen the ocean before. What viewers see in this film are real inner city children’s reactions to experiencing the sea for the first time.

2018’s Unseen Ocean was the most successful year for the Volvo x Sky Atlantic partnership:

o 15,000,000 30” trailer views

o 424,000 full length views

o 5th most watched piece of content on Sky Atlantic

o 18,000 linear views

There was a 91% view through rate via Sky OnDemand and a total of almost 87,000 people on YouTube watched a minimum of 75% of the story despite having the option to ‘skip ad’ after 5 seconds of viewing.

Viewers who had seen HMS were 25% more favourable of the Volvo Brand.

Those who have seen Unseen Ocean are 3.5x more likely to consider a Volvo in the future vs non-viewers. Purchase intent increased from 75% to 86% after viewing.

Those aware of the Volvo x Sky Atlantic partnership were at least 2x more likely to recommend Volvo than those that weren’t (61% v 29%)