The climate crisis is the most pressing issue of our time. It is also deeply generational in nature.

Young people have inherited a planet in decline and have never known a world without manmade natural disasters, and the threat of environmental collapse.

Founded in 2018, School Strike 4 Climate Australia (SS4C) is a youth-led global strike movement made up of students. In 2023, we worked with them to bring urgent attention to the need for political action on the future of our planet.

In 2019 SS4C hosted a National Climate Strike, causing outrage across the country. Politicians, public figures, and the media condemned students for missing a day off school.

Instead of addressing their concerns, then-Prime Minister Scott Morrison criticised students, calling for “more learning, less activism”.

Despite the rebuke, students were emboldened by the extraordinary attention generated for the cause and SS4C became famous across Australia.

By 2022, however, the group’s momentum had all but vanished from the public arena as media coverage turned instead to the post-pandemic cost of living crisis.

Our brief was to help SS4C reinvigorate their call to action for 2023 with a communications idea that would earn an outsized share of attention, and alert Australia of the ongoing threat of the climate crisis.

Young Australians are deeply familiar with the threat of climate crisis, which is a rising cause of anxiety and other mental health challenges among school aged children globally. We knew that the audience we needed to reach on their behalf was the mainstream Australian press who would help SS4C communicate the urgency of their cause and put pressure on politicians to act. More importantly, we wanted to ensure that the media coverage we generated helped to foster the sense of community SS4C was known for, so that young Australians would feel less alone and helpless in the fight against an issue that can feel too overwhelming to tackle. There is strength in numbers, so the more people we could help rally (and the more coverage we could earn) the stronger our support for SS4C’s mission.

The education system requires a medical certificate to explain your absence from school.

So, we created a sick note signed by a different kind of doctor. Doctors of Environmental Science – who recognise the importance of protesting for the planet.

Anyone can go online, enter their name and download their personalised certificate. When their school questions their attendance on the day of The National Climate Strike, students can present the Climate Doctors certificate as a defiant symbol of activism that demonstrates that the climate is more important than the classroom.

Media coverage is the lifeblood of activism. Without it, conversations about pressing causes rarely leave the core of those dedicated to change. Therefore, our core objective was to get the climate strike back at the top of Australia’s mainstream news cycle. The insight that unlocked our strategy came from our understanding of the “enemy” - politicians with a tendency to sideline the voices of young people. We knew that in September 2023, students would once again swap their classrooms for the streets and town halls of Australia. And we predicted that once again, policymakers would adopt the “stay in school” rhetoric they had used to deflect from the issue before. So, instead of ignoring school rules and educators, we opted to use them to give students permission to protest.

Doctor’s Certificate Launch

We launched a website where students could download a personalised Doctor’s sick note so they could skip school & attend National Climate Rallies happening across the country.

PR

Doctors and SS4C leaders became spokespeople for the campaign, raising unprecedented awareness of the certificates & the rallies.

The National Climate Strike

Tens of thousands of students turned out in major cities across the country, using our Doctor’s Certificate to skip school & protest.

After years of declining coverage of climate protests, the sick note fired up the media. And before students had marched out of the classroom to make their voices heard, their sick notes were already protesting for them.

In one week, the campaign reached 


- 2.1 billion impressions.

- Media and PR coverage across 26 countries

- $58 million in earned media.

- $0 media spend.