Last year, the British Government published its 25 Year Environment Plan. For all the bright ideas and positivity, the plan lacks legislative measures that underpin and legally enforce a better deal for nature. To build public pressure, the campaign had to drive people to take action for nature’s recovery and play their part in halting and reversing land degradation and biodiversity loss. A key objective for the brief was to increase social engagement among new audiences and encourage peer-to-peer sharing to spread the message as far as possible.

The film needed to inspire people to speak out and ask their politicians to take action – whether it be by meeting them in person, sending them a message or joining a mass lobby on Westminster.

To make an impact we knew we had to unite the Generations across Britain. For years, Hollywood has been doing that by turning our favourite childhood stories into blockbuster movies. So we turned to the most British childhood story of all, The Wind in the Willows, and reimagined what the 100 year old classic would look like in modern day Britain. The campaign started like any movie launch, with film posters all around the country. Then in 500 cinemas, 18 million people saw a trailer with a twist. Online, the film trailer took on a life of its own as people sent it to their MP’s, shared it with their families and called for it to be shown in schools. The characters then marched into the real world to join the british public at protests such as Extinction Rebellion.

We aimed to target those in the UK who are already wildlife enthusiasts, share a concern for the environment and are motivated to take action:

Baby Boomers with a vested interest in their communities, likely to engage with physical local level activations. 35+ parents with young children who are increasingly digitally connected, have some involvement within their community but, due to the pressures of modern life, wish they could do more. Gen Y stretch group of self-proclaimed ‘Click-tivists’, actively engaging with social media to promote causes they believe in.

By evoking a sense of nostalgia and loss across generations, we can remind a broad audience what’s at stake before compelling them to adopt a new, diverse and progressive vision of our wildlife and its future, ultimately uniting them in collective action and giving them a tangible way of shaping the politcal agenda through public pressure.

The main campaign push was over the first 2 weeks to make as much noise as possible, continued for 2 weeks thereafter through retargeting.

The campaign started with thousands of movie posters around the country. In shopping malls from London to Edinburgh, high visibility OOH and at cinemas.

At 500 cinemas across the UK, our trailer with a twist was shown 125,000 times to a captive audience in amongst real trailers.

Facebook/Instagram ads provided an always on element through several phases; optimised for awareness, then engagement and finally retargeting was employed for conversion.

The campaign reached over 17 million people in the first week through Facebook and Twitter.

The characters then marched in the real world by joining the British public at various marches, such as Extinction Rebellion. Photographs from these events were then shared across social to follow the film and continue building engagement with new audiences.

18 million people watched the trailer across 500 cinema’s

195 News outlets reported the story, from the BBC & ITV, to Dailymail, to The Sun, to Vogue.

3 national newspapers printed double page spreads of the story

The PR reached 60 million individuals nationwide

Currently at 7,700 new audience sign-ups to the Wildlife Trust

Most amount of social engagement for the Wildlife Trusts ever.

One month after launch, the UK Government bowed to public pressure and declared British Wildlife in a state of emergency.