Problem:

Today in Mexico, 70% of the rivers are polluted with chemicals.

Challenge:

Help Greenpeace raise awareness on this issue.

Objectives:

Create a reaction in the public opinion to influence politicians and business corporations.

Strategy:

On World Tourism Day, we launched Toxic Tours, the first toxic travel agency.

Execution:

We invited many Mexican celebrities to practice and promote our toxic activities like snorkeling in oil and dead fish fishing.

We organized educational tours to polluted rivers in Mexico for people to interact first hand with the problem.

We also sent postcards with a rotten smell - signed by the celebrities and the people affected - to congressmen and the media.

The effect of our PR Story:

The celebrities helped us produce this PR story to transform an activist protest into a social and environmental debate.

Outcome:

The story went around the world.

International media personally came to take the tour.

The campaign made its way to China, the country with the most polluted rivers in the world.

Total ROI equaled $1,037,660 dollars.

The challenge was to help Greenpeace raise awareness on the increasing pollution in mexican rivers.

The goal was to create a reaction in the public opinion to influence politicians and business corporations.

The target audience was people that normally don't pay attention to environmental campaigns.

Greenpeace research showed that the mere publication of scientific studies wasn't enough to reach a wide audience.

Output / Awareness:

Total impacts: 51,352,000

Overall impressions: 10,586,028

National and international articles: 216

Knowledge / Consideration:

The buzz was strong enough to put pressure on local and national authorities to publicly acknowledge the severity of the problem.

International media came to take the toxic tours.

The campaign reached the television in China, the country with the most polluted rivers.

Action / Business Impact:

Return on investment reached $1,037,660

Visits to the website in a month: 175,420

We chose World Tourism Day to launch the campaign with a provocative spin.

We launched and promoted a toxic travel agency inviting people to discover recently polluted rivers.

Celebrities and opinion leaders joined the campaign acting as toxic tourists and promoting the toxic activities. This phase lasted two weeks.

Then we announced that Toxic Tours was a Greenpeace initiative.

That day we took our first educational tour in Santiago river, one of the most contaminated in Mexico. Celebrities and opinion leaders took the tour, met the people affected and helped us spread the message.

After the tour we sent postcards with a rotten smell to congressmen and the media, in which the celebrities and the people affected expressed their feelings on the pollution and asked for help.

We also printed big postcards in which Greenpeace volunteers collected signatures from people and supporters in different Mexican cities.

In order to create a reaction in the public opinion, we needed to draw attention from a much wider audience than the usual Greenpeace audience.

Our goal was to create a PR story to help us reach this new audience and invite celebrities and opinion leaders to endorse a campaign message that otherwise wouldn't be heard.

The planning for the campaign included:

. A provocative launch - the toxic travel agency - to generate curiosity, debate and controversy.

. An educational experience - the real tours to contaminated places - for opinion leaders to interact first hand with the problem and help us spread the message.

. An sarcastic form of protest - postcards with a rotten smell - in which celebrities, opinion leaders and the people affected sent their message to decision makers like congressmen and the media.