“Polar bears are like the canary in the coal mine. If they are struggling, we will be the next one struggling. Because climate change will affect all of us.”

These were the words of our research partner, Ole Liodden. He has been studying polar bears in the arctic for decades. By understanding the migration patterns and health of the polar bear population, he can understand the threat posed by climate change.

However, the very problem he is attempting to solve is creating serious obstacles for his research, as rapidly changing climates create dangerous barriers between him and the polar bears.

Now more than ever, conservationists like Ole need new tools to help them navigate these challenges.

Intel’s campaign gave him the tools needed to solve his toughest problems, and our documentary film and social campaign gave the issue a platform to share his story with the world.

Intel partnered with arctic conservationist Ole Liodden on an expedition to the arctic seas north of Svalbard, Norway, and used drones to study the effects of climate change on the polar bear population.

We seamlessly integrated our technology into the mission itself. The Intel Falcon 8+ Drone was used to fly over dangerous ice sheets and difficult mountain passes, which was safer for the researchers. The drone’s infrared camera, typically used for thermal monitoring in the oil industry, was used to detect polar bears hidden in the white snow.

A mission like this had never been attempted before, and it set a strong precedent for the use of emerging technology in climate research.

Intel’s campaign told the story of our partnership with Ole Liodden and our adventure to the front lines of climate change.

A documentary film launched on Facebook and Youtube, which outlined the serious problems facing our planet and how Intel was helping solve them.

A social and digital campaign supported the launch of this film.

Short Facebook videos captured key story beats and a separate tech film gave an in-depth story on the drone technology that made the expedition possible.

Gifs, photography, and bite-sized films across social media brought people the arctic seas, fully establishing the setting, environmental problem, and how we were attempting to solve it.

Finally, in tandem with the launch of the campaign, our media partner The New York Times elevated the story to a global audience through an interactive feature piece which gave viewers an in-depth look into the story.

Our campaign was a success, capturing the attention of the media and fans on social media. The campaign increased our primary key performance indicator (Intel as an innovation leader) by 27%, while also garnering 130 million impressions on social and 17 million media impressions. On NYT, we achieved a video completion rate of an amazing 72%. With $116K spend, we garnered 1.8M video views across two videos, creating a significantly outsized impact compared to our spend.

Polar bears have been identified as one of the top species impacted by climate change: their habitat is melting quickly, and they are struggling to adapt.

Unfortunately, the ability to study polar bears has also been impacted by climate change. It’s becoming more difficult to find the bears and accurately track their behavior and health due to extremely challenging and constantly changing terrain. Polar bear research would reach a standstill if there wasn’t a better way to study them.

So Intel had an idea: instead of using our commercial drones for their designed purpose (to inspect structures), we would to deploy them for a grander purpose. We would use emerging technology for good: to advance polar bear research, making it safer for polar bears and for scientists. Only then could we extend our impact beyond the B2B audience, and bring deeper meaning to our tech progressive, purpose-driven audience.

Many people don’t recognize Intel as anything more than an ingredient brand inside their personal computers.

Our goal was to demonstrate how Intel technology powers innovation around the world and can transform the way the scientific community studies and solves the world’s most serious problems.

What better problem to tackle than the biggest one facing our planet? Climate change.

We partnered with a researcher who had been studying the effects of climate change on the arctic for decades. Our mission was to use emerging technology to amplify his research and set a new standard for how we solve the challenges posed by climate change.