How do you create a campaign that influences over 80 national governments, 15,000 lawmakers, generating 2 million pledges from people from 181 countries?

By making it personal for all 7.5 billion people on earth.

WWF had no budget to buy the media it needed to engage an audience at this scale - instead we created a single, unforgettable headline that was relatable to every person and picked up by every major news channel across the world.

By turning big data into relatable facts, Plastic Diet personalises the plastic crisis in popular culture forever.

Plastic is an environmental catastrophe, yet it felt far away, literally in the ocean.

But the only way to 'really' stop plastic is a globally binding treaty, the only way to do that is lobby governments.

Brief: Galvanise enough public support to enable the WWF to lobby country governments to support the treaty

Objectives

1: Attitude – grab the people’s attention from around the world.

KPI: Reach 1.75 billion people, generate 100,000 organic posts.

2: Behaviour - galvanize the planet’s people into action.

KPI: 1 million supporters, from 50 different countries.

3: Action – generate commitments from governments.

WWF needed half of the UN’s members to commit to a globally binding plastic treaty in order to start its negotiation. This was securing 97 (over 50% so that it forces a vote) of the 193 member nations ahead the UN Environment summit

IDEA: Your Plastic Diet

Our diets now contain plastic, so our bodies are unavoidably becoming infested with plastic pollution.

We found we’re ingesting 100,000 microplastics a year, this equates to 250 grams of plastic which means people are consuming 5 grams of plastic pollution every week. What plastic object weighs 5 grams and is globally ubiquitous, with 20 billion of them in use? A credit card.

By quantifying the huge amount of data into a single fact and visualizing it into a universally recognizable device, it made the statistics personal and ACTIONABLE and plastic pollution UNFORGETTABLE. It made the plastic problem PERSONAL – this is a piece of plastic that has people’s name on it, it’s with them every day.

With this single, universal scientific fact, we could turn the billions of credit cards in people’s pockets into a personal and confronting reminder of the urgent need for change.

Our target audience, put simply was humans. But more specifically, it was governments. And to get governments to act we needed to generate public pressure.

We distilled the entire issue into a universally understood headline fact ' 'you eat a credit card a week'. This was specially crafted to cross all boarders and create maximum noise and pressure - to make the world sit up and think about plastic in a whole new, personal way.

We created a simple campaign toolkit for the media, in 11 of the worlds most popular languages, that allowed each of the 40+ WWF offices to create their own media placements wherever they were available.

Crucially, once we shocked people with the credit card fact, we created a simple CTA that led to a globally synchronised petition that would enable people to 'DO' something about it.

Plastic Diet was announced to the world’s media via a press conference at WWF’s Singapore HQ. An 'always on' in-house studio helped repurpose assets for the the WWF offices who used the pro-bono media spaces from media owners.

All activity pushed people to an interactive campaign website. Based on diet and geography, people could take a test to see how much plastic they were likely ingesting a week, compelling them to sign the global petition.

Packs featuring a physical version of the campaigns’ card, along with the massive weight of the public support via the signatures, were used by WWF teams to engage politicians, civil servants and governments in conversations, meetings, summits, and conferences, from the G20 to the UN throughout 2019

Plastic Diet has become WWF’s largest and fastest growing single public action in its’ 60-year history, with over 2/3 of world governments finally agreeing for the desperate need for change.

1: Attitude KPI: Reach 1.75 billion people, generate 100,000 organic posts.

Over 400,000 pieces of media coverage were generated after 45 separate WWF offices activated the campaign. Every major news outlet from all seven continents covered the story.

Result: 5.2bn - 300% of target; 600,000 organic posts – 600% of target.

2: Behaviour KPI: 1 million supporters, from 50 different countries.

Result: 2.03 million supporters, 200% of target; Pledges from 181 countries, 320% of target.

3: Action KPI: Public commitment of 97 governments by the end of 2020.

Result: 131 governments have publicly called for an agreement on plastic or agreed to consider it – 135% of target. This means ahead of the UN Environment summit, WWF has secured more than enough support from global governments to table official discussion sat the highest global government level.

The campaign influenced policy documents, including Australia and

the United States where Congress tabled the ‘Break Free From Plastic Pollution Act 2020’. The very first paragraph of the bill directly quotes Plastic Diet messaging, while the bill sponsors used the campaign device to announce the bill to the media.

Our bespoke research continues to be cited by media, brands, organisations and people when talking about the environmental impact of plastic, demonstrating its lasting impact on awareness about the issue.