BBK is a banking foundation in the Basque Country, Spain, that’s been working for years for the development of the region. In this context, BBK’s main goal is to collaborate with the preservation and optimization of the region’s state of welfare, and wanted to launch a series of actions that help to educate, sensitize and raise awareness about the importance of sustainable competitiveness and its present and future effects for our society. With 75% of young people thinking the future is horrifying, and 56% of them thinking the world is doomed, there was a general feeling of defeatism and the false belief that making sustainable decisions today is useless.

Our goal was to impact a society that had grown comfortable and oversaturated with sustainability messages, waking up this numbed society by materializing how our daily decisions may determine how our society will ultimately look like in the near future.

By placing a giant sculpture by surprise in the middle of the main river of one of the main cities in the Basque Country, we ensured to launch a direct message to the general public, as well as environmental institutions and organizations. After everybody had time to see it, and the media had covered the story, we released the short-film that explained the environmental message behind the head, based on sustainable competitiveness, providing a recognizable face for people to associate with the idea.

Sustainable competitiveness was a complex concept that the brand wanted to transmit in order to raise awareness about how our decisions today affect our future, but keeping the positive input that we still have today the power to change the future. To transmit the message that with the actions we make today we decide if we sink or stay afloat in the future, we created a giant hyper-realistic sculpture inspired by a real girl, and installed in the middle of the river of Bilbao, designed to pop up and disappear as the tide floods and recedes and for pedestrians to see.

To make a futuristic short-film we relied on foresight, a field that generates knowledge about the future, collaborating with one of Spain’s most renowned professionals, who helped us determine a series of events that the protagonist will live in the future, and released it to the public and media.

First, on September 22th, 2021, a giant hyper-realist sculpture of a girl’s head anchored in the middle of Bizkaia’s river, designed to pop up and disappear as the tides rose and lowered; Then, on October 1st, 2021, a sci-fi short-film starring the girl that inspired the sculpture, portraying the future of the region suffering the consequences of our unsustainable actions today, based on the work of professional futurists and perspectivists.

Even though it was a regional campaign, it reached both national and international media and institutional authorities.

The campaign went viral reaching +3000 impacts in media and press, with 30% of international coverage as it was present in 75 different countries, and an audience of +200 thousand people, with an AVE of 5 million euros (+87% in KPIs).With a sentiment of 100% positive among all coverage.

The news about the project went viral on social media around the world, with more than 300 million views. Due to its huge success, the film was aired in prime-time on Basque Country’s main TV channel, eitb.

We managed to call the attention of organizations and institutions, both national and international (such as AVAAZ, Basque Country’s government, Greenpeace…), as they got very interested in the project.