The Campaign

CarbonStory is a social enterprise fighting climate change by letting members sponsor green projects that reduce or remove greenhouse gas emissions. The organisation wanted to raise awareness about the devastating effects of climate change and inspire others to offset their individual carbon footprints. Although based in Singapore our remit was global. Like so many environmental organisations, we had close to no budget – just 1,000 SGD. The climate change issue was far from people's realities in Singapore and beyond. To open their eyes,we brought the threat of rising sea levels to their doorstep with a digital user generated content solution. worldunderwater.org shows your world suddenly under water. Type any location, see it underwater, and feel the catastrophic effects of climate change. Users could spread the word by sharing their curated underwater locations with friends on social media. Every visit and shared image was a personalised experience for the user. They could then take action by calculating and offsetting their carbon footprint by supporting a green project. Just hours after launch and 1.5 days after seeding the website on environmental blogs, thousands of people began sharing their own selected places underwater and personal messages about rising sea levels and climate change. In the first week the site reached 213 countries. After one month, close to 900,000 locations were generated. We had reached critical mass by World Environment Day on June 5th. The site is currently transforming into an advanced research tool in partnership with Boston University.

The Brief

Our target audience was everyday Singaporeans who didn’t feel that the climate change issue was close to them. The challenge was to bring the catastrophic effects of climate change right to their doorstep on a minuscule budget (just USD 1,000). Research told us that our target audience consumes twice as much content online than on linear TV and was likely to share relevant content online (source: ComScore). So the message needed to be engaging, personalised, mobile-friendly, and as tailored as possible for this busy online audience.

Results

By seeding this experience with environmentalists, environmentally-aware celebrities, techies, bloggers, and influential websites – we managed to break into mainstream media with a huge bang. The visual impact and simplicity of our images were designed for the bite-sized appetite of cable news, and the story reached 186 countries, generating more than 200 million media impressions and $30 million in publicity, with nearly 2 million minutes spent interacting with the World Underwater, and 300 million tonnes of carbon offset. All that without a dollar of media spent: a truly viral phenomenon about an issue in need of attention.

Execution

The website and #WorldUnderWater hashtag launched online on April 30th. It was seeded online to environmental influencers to progressively gain momentum up to World Environment Day on June 5th. The user generated images and stories of submerged locations created by our audience were the real catalyst that helped the campaign reach critical mass and inspire even more sharing. In just one week, the website was picked up across popular news, environmental, lifestyle and technology publications all over the world. The campaign evolved along with the organisations that got involved including the United Nations Environment Programme and the United Nations International Year of Small Islands. In fact, the campaign has transformed into an innovative research tool for Boston University which is currently becoming an important part of the curriculum.

The Situation

The challenge we faced is the same as what every environmental organisation encountered since before Al Gore’s “Inconvenient Truth”: to get the world to wake up and act.

The Strategy

With so many charities in Singapore all vying for both time and attention, creating a personal connection about the climate change issue was key. We brought the threat of rising sea levels right to their doorstep using one of the most ubiquitous and popular tools on the internet (Google Street View), connected with mobile-friendly, hardware accelerated graphics (Web GL) to create a personalised, sharable experience that’s completely in sync with our busy, tech and social media savvy target audience. This personalisation empowered our audience to curate their own powerful climate change message while enabling us to spread the message of how rising sea levels can affect everyone, everywhere.