2015 Winners & Shortlists

The Campaign

The Challenge: Over 1.5M tons of waste are dumped and poorly managed yearly in Lebanon - including 71M green/amber glass bottles. The Green Glass Recycling Initiative for Lebanon came up with a brilliant and sustainable solution, while simultaneously preserving traditional glassblowing traditions on a large scale. However, without widespread awareness to the problem and solution, the momentum of the project would eventually halt and lead to environmental catastrophe. The PR objectives were two-fold. For the client, the goal was to create enough online buzz and understanding of the situation, process, ingenuity, and design products to reach a largely unaware target audience by appealing to their sense of social responsibility to an important environmental cause. In terms our role as a post-production house, our objective was to develop and build on our own brand by creatively addressing an important cause and intelligent socially-aware solution we felt would improve the larger context of our community and engage our clients. In order to establish the widespread national awareness needed to satisfy the PR objectives for both, we created an animation that simply spoke to each viewer one-on-one, using compelling storytelling to engage and channel their decisions toward social responsible actions. The outcome was quite successful, with the animation quickly spreading across many social media platforms, showcased in direct emails, featured on popular blogs and articles. As demand grew, an indiegogo campaign comfortably raised much needed funds to support the initiative in catering for increasing points of sale, deliveries, and supplies.

The Brief

The inventive solution to the environmental issue constructed by the client was missing a crucial ingredient for a fully sustainable cycle: socially responsible consumers to buy and use the products. Without widespread awareness by the target audience, the products would just pile up on the shelves and momentum of the project eventually halted. The intended target audience was a range of young to middle-aged individuals that are active on online social media channels. They are largely unaware of the impending problem, have a social and environmental conscience but not sure how they can help on an individual level.

Results

Mentions and comments over social media were extremely positive and very much on the favourable side when it came to the campaign and animation. The most quantifiable of results directly resulting from the animation was its ability to quickly raise $30,000 (40% online, and 60% offline by donors who were worried about paying through online channels) by spearheading the indiegogo campaign. In addition, the initiative itself and the animation were featured on a huge number of articles, including many client interviews and blog features and writeups. There were also countless impassioned tweets under the hashtag #GGRIL on twitter. The demand increased to require many more points of sale, events for new collections, and the need to cater for more deliveries (for which GGRIL had to purchase a new truck). Even the largest local brewery took notice, gifting glass-blown wine carafes made from its own discarded bottles.

Execution

The campaign pretty much ran according to the original plan delineated above, but its popularity spread much faster than we originally expected. Its debut at Beirut Design Week was successful and we found that the animation was being shared and written about by popular bloggers before we had the opportunity to approach them. In looking through analytics on youtube, vimeo, and twitter we found that the animation was being shared by people in different countries and areas we had not anticipated. As our client found that the project expanded much wider than he was originally expecting to cater for, and he needed more equipment to be able to handle the increasing demand, points of sale, deliveries, and bottle supplies for the glassblowers. So it was decided that the campaign would expand to include a much-needed fundraising drive through indiegogo with the animation at its helm.

The Situation

The Lebanese consume large quantities of beverages packaged in green and amber glass bottles. Historically, 100% of these were sustainably shipped off to a single factory where they were melted down into new bottles and sold back to local beer companies and wine-makers. However, the factory was decimated by fighter jets in 2006 and never rebuilt. Every year since, local companies have had to import bottles from abroad, and 71 Million of these bottles are dumped into landfills: a major fire hazard, cause of community resentment, and above all, a looming environmental catastrophe waiting to happen.

The Strategy

Research was conducted with the client to fully understand aspects they wanted to communicate, including the problem, context and background, different steps in the production process, and points of sale where the products could be found. In tandem, through research on how best to communicate to our intended audience, we wrote a script that simply spoke and educated through a personal perspective to each viewer. We realized the importance of illustrative storytelling through the eyes of the viewer by showing them the direct relevance to their own daily lives and society. The animation was planned to debut during Beirut Design Week, where it would reach popular bloggers, press, and youth present, that would share it within their circles. Afterwards we would support the buzz created through direct emails and sharing on social channels.