For decades, conservationists have rallied people against poachers in order to save elephants from

extinction. The war waged on the ivory trade has been both public and successful. Despite this

growing success, elephant populations continue to be decimated. The ugly truth is that the well-publicised decline of the ivory trade has left the public with the impression they do not need to donate to the cause. People believe that the elephant poaching problem was being solved.

To reignite passion for this fading cause, we inspired people to feel for elephants in a completely

novel way. We gave every single person the ability to speak elephant.

Hello in Elephant is a world-first human-elephant translator – part utility, part sharing generator, part

donation mechanism. Powered by artificial intelligence and voice recognition technology, it gave

people a way to translate text, emoji, and their voice, into the corresponding elephant emotion or

expression.

The idea launched on World Elephant Day where other conservation organisations were hijacked to

change the conversation from poaching to the growing problem of human-wildlife conflict. With no

paid media budget, the campaign went global garnering 400m impressions and USD$6.53m in

earned media. Importantly it created renewed energy to save elephants - donations rose 34% and it

delivered an immediate profit ROMI of 4.3:1 and a long-term projected profit ROMI of 19.1:1.

People give to people.

It is hard for people to give their emotional headspace and money to elephants during a time dominated by humanitarian crisis. The on-going Syrian conflict, catastrophic floods in South Asia, the Rohingya crisis in Myanmar. The world in 2017 was facing the worst series of humanitarian crisis since 1945, according to the UN. It is reflected in charitable giving around the world as people come first and animals come last. In the USA only 3% of charitable giving goes to environmental and animal causes, it is way behind human focused giving such as medical research and even arts and culture.

So how do we make elephants feel worthy when we are competing against the suffering of humans? We needed to make them more human.