Following a very successful and highly emotive brand campaign ‘Whalesong’, Optus, Australia’s second largest Telco wanted to do something tangible to help whales by teaming up with WSPA. Working off the proposition of ‘Making an end to whaling possible’, we set about transforming a simple petition into a speech using the voices of thousands of Australians with a powerful message: Australia says NO to whaling.

This message was to be aimed the world at large, to demonstrate Australia’s determination to put an end to whaling.

We ultimately collected 12,727 words to contribute to the IWC speech, which exceeded our target by 2,445%. Additionally, there were 102,127 unique visitors to the Optus Give Whales A Voice website, which exceeded our target by 104%.Best of all, the video presentation of the IWC speech was used by the Australian Minister for the Environment at the conference to reinforce Australia’s commitment to putting an end to whaling.

We created a microsite where visitors were given a word to record using their computer or mobile phone.

An emotive TVC, in combination with online banners and outdoor projections, drove people to the site to record their word.Once enough words were collected, we put them together to create a powerful speech on behalf of whales, thus giving them a voice.The speech was presented to delegates from around the world at the International Whaling Commission meeting in Morocco.

Give Whales A Voice was a perfect fit for Optus, for a very simple reason:Who is better suited to giving people (or whales, as the case may be!) the ability to communicate than a telecommunications company?