Why is this work relevant for Creative Strategy?

The Creative Strategy category asks entrants like us, to demonstrate how a big challenge is overcome by strategy revealing a new insight, and then using that to power a great creative idea. Essentially, the work should demonstrate how a new way of looking at things made people look at things differently. The Carbon Thumbprint is an example of a big challenge with a human problem, tackled by a strategic reframing of the issue, presented in a creative way. We hope you like it.

Background

10% of the world’s energy goes into running the internet. And barely anyone knows it. In Australia, the energy network is still majority coal powered, which means that powering the internet comes with a huge carbon cost. Belong, a digital first Australian telco is committed to being a leading Australia’s environmental transformation and in 2020, they became the first Carbon Neutral accredited telco in Australia. Now, every Belong product is be a Carbon Neutral product.

The Interpretation of the Challenge (30% of vote)

Our challenge was to make sure Belong's leadership on this issue, did not go unobserved, unappreciated or unrewarded. But there was key problem - in Australia, the concept Carbon Neutral was a 15 year old idea. Back between 2007 to 2010, Australian brands spent hundreds of millions positioning themselves as Carbon Neutral in such numbers the period gave rise to the notion of 'Green Washing'. In 2020, to the average Australian, Carbon Neutral was old news. Compounding this issue was that no one thought of their mobile network as a source of CO2. Effectively, Belong had solved a problem Australian's didn't know they had. This meant that we needed to simultaneously make the nation's mobile users aware of the problem, and motivated by the solution. Or in other words: we had to turn an old idea, into new news, and make people realise that their behaviour was the problem.

The Insight / Breakthrough Thinking (30% of vote)

We started by gaining an understanding of the scale of the issue - both large and small. Working with Australia’s leading economists and sustainability experts, we created a formula that translates network usage to CO2 emissions. Unlocking this allowed us to understand to the gram, the carbon impact of digital behaviour. Each interaction we have online ( phone, table or desktop) requires the generation of data, and each bit of data has a carbon cost. This effectively gives us the weight of the internet that people use. The more data we use, the more carbon is created. This work unlocked two key opportunities for the creative team. 1. It allowed us to talk to people about their personal carbon impact, rather than just focusing on a large whole number. 2. The formula unlocked the opportunity to weigh each digital media moment that our audience would come into contact with.

The Creative Idea (20% of vote)

We created a powerful new way to understand the impact of your digital and mobile data impact. The Carbon Thumbprint: each individual’s personal CO2 output created by their data use every year. We made people’s mobile and data carbon contribution tangible, turning numbers into a powerful visual representation of the problem, making it impossible to ignore. We launched with an integrated campaign introducing the concept of the Carbon Thumbprint which lead to viewers to the Carbon Thumbprint app. This app converts your mobile network usage into an amount of CO2, so you can see your personal data emissions. What’s more, the app displays your Carbon Thumbprint to scale using Augmented Reality and then directs you to neutralise your impact by switching to Belong. We also weighed media moments across the campaign revealing in the moment secrets about specific media placements like digital display, pre-roll film and Spotify.

The Outcome / Results (20% of vote)

The campaign's creative use of data brought a new truth to life in a way that earned attention, turned customers into advocates and helped to neutralise tonnes and tonnes of CO2. Since launch, sales of carbon neutral products have exceeded 95,000 units, removing 50,000kgs of potential CO2 emissions. Belong's rate of new customer growth in mobile now challenges parent company Telstra in volume. As of November 2020, research shows that 44% of all Australians are confident they understand the meaning of term 'Carbon Thumbprint' - showing that the solution is rare mix of sophistication and simplicity.