Ocean Of The Future

By Ogilvy UK, London, UK

For Greenpeace

Highly Commended in category Design & Branding

In subcategory Installation/Experience/Exhibition

WPPED Cream
Project Description
This is a brief about ocean plastic. And what we can do about the scourge of it.
Plastic constitutes 90% of all the trash floating on the ocean’s surface & there are 46,000 pieces of plastic per square mile of ocean on Earth. When it comes to the UN development goals, this brief addresses #14, “Life Below Water”.
However, there is a case to be made that this issue goes far beyond the oceans. When it comes to the sustainable development goals this is something that concerns #1 (No poverty) because according to the OECD, the world’s oceans contribute $1.5 trillion annually to the overall economy. The World Bank estimates that billions of people —especially the world’s poorest— rely on healthy oceans to provide jobs and food, underscoring the urgent need to sustainably use and protect this natural resource. The development goals of Zero Hunger (#2), Climate Change (#13), Responsible Consumption (#12) and Sustainable Communities (#13) are all also affected by the state of the world’s oceans.
Fighting ocean pollution has been a key pillar for Greenpeace since its founding in 1971, and, nearly fifty years later, it is more important than ever.
Agency Solution
To highlight how much plastic is ending up in our oceans, we created a new exhibit at a leading aquarium called ‘the Ocean of the Future’. Instead of fish, we filled it entirely with plastic. We then filmed the reactions of schoolchildren to the tanks full of bottles, bags and food packaging in place of the beautiful marine life they were expecting to see. To enhance the experience further, we created new information signs which described our plastic “species” and the damage they do to the ocean environment and its wildlife.
To raise awareness of the issue we partnered with Greenpeace.
There is a behavioural science principle called the ‘concreteness effect’. As humans we tend to process concrete concepts faster than we do abstract ones. So we had to make this issue real for people in order for them to notice.
How could we make people see what the Ocean of the Future might look like if we don’t address the problem now? How could help people to visualise a very hard to process concept of a future they could not see?
We took an aquarium (quite literally a showcase of the world’s oceans) and replaced all the beautiful richness of sea-life with the plastic detritus of modern living.
We made the potential  “Ocean of the Future” real today. Then we invited some visitors to view the exhibit, so the world can realise it’s not too late to re-write the future if we do something about it now.
Because there will be more plastic than fish in the ocean by 2050 if we fail to act now, we decided to show people what this would look like. By filling a (fishless) aquarium with hundreds of pieces of plastic waste, we created a reflection of this possible future.
All of the plastic used was collected from a beach near to the aquarium the day before the shoot. We filmed the real reactions of local schoolchildren who we invited on what they thought was a normal school trip. This then became the basis of our global online and social media campaign. A full 90 second film played in cinemas across the UK, and the campaign was also supported by large-scale digital out of home and press ads.
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