2012 Winners & Shortlists

Results and Effectiveness

Our 22 turtles received thousands of online votes, cheers and support throughout the 5 weeks, with the most popular turtle ‘Amal’ receiving over 1,800 votes alone. In fact, www.gulfturtles.com received 6,000 unique visits.

Creative Execution

Key to the future survival of turtles is understanding their migration patterns – i.e. where they are swimming to-and-from. Inspired by swimming, ‘The Great Gulf Turtle Race’ was then born – a symbolic long-distance swimming competition involving 22 tagged turtles. Supporters were encouraged to log onto www.gulfturtles.com to follow the race via a Turtle tracking map and be part of the initiative. Social Media was then used to bring it all to life and educate our audience on the project. Using Twitter/Facebook, we not only provided fans with regular updates on which turtle was leading the race but also which turtle was winning the popularity stakes. We also ran numerous competitions/initiatives to maintain interactivity such as a caption competition on Twitter where fans had to come up with marine related movie titles using turtle word-play. Finally, PR and targeted emails were used throughout to support and amplify the race.

Insights, Strategy and the Idea

Turtles are one of the planet’s oldest species dating back to the times of the dinosaurs, yet their very existence is under threat. Due to habitat destruction, accidental capture through fishing, human harvesting, pollution and climate change, the survival of this species hangs in the balance. Therefore, EWS-WWF (Emirates Wildlife Society in association with the WWF) and the Marine Research Foundation (MRF) launched their Marine Turtle Conservation project to better understand the needs of Hawksbill Turtles – in Oman, Qatar, UAE and Iran. In addition to a sponsorship scheme, a turtle adoption initiative was introduced to help fund the research project as well as raise awareness about these highly migratory animals. Distributing centers would make these adoption packs available through their different outlets, and donate the revenue to the Project. The challenge then was to find an innovative ways of communicating the programme and gain sponsorship for the turtles.