Provocative DOOH Campaign for Marine Charity Our Only World Tells People to ‘Stop Saving the Whales'

DENTSU CREATIVE UK team, Leli Leitner and Coco Shellim, have created a new DOOH campaign for Cornwall-based marine charity, Our Only World. 

Our Only World won £300K of advertising space through the Ocean Outdoor charity initiative ‘Drops in the Ocean’, which seeks to give a voice to non-profits working to save the planet. The Dentsu team donated their time through the Matchable skills volunteering programme to help produce the charity’s first ever ad campaign. 

‘Stop Saving’ features rippling, graphic billboards, which use provocative language to redirect the attention usually given to saving big sea animals, to the small animals at the bottom of the food chain. ‘Saving the whales is pointless’, one poster says, ‘…if they have nothing to eat. We look after the bottom of the food chain so the top can look after itself.’

The work aims to raise funds for the charity’s SeAlive Tiles ocean restoration project. Developed by Arc Marine for Our Only World, the hexagonal ceramic tiles with 3D textured designs can be attached to flat, manmade walls in the sea to provide a vital habitat for sea life. Typically, the underwater sections of harbours, piers and sea defenses, with the current boom in sea construction increasing the number of dead zones every day, they can make these manmade structures thrive and enable the human structures to work in harmony with nature. 

Like a bug hotel for sea life, by changing the surfaces from flat and hostile to rocky and uneven, all sorts of species can find a home, from seaweed to invertebrates and fish. They have shown to bring over 30% more sea life and more than 80 new species back to these barren areas, creating a chain reaction up the food chain, and ultimately supporting the return of larger creatures. The SeAlive Tiles also improve the water quality on our coasts, which is also vital for the health of our seas. 

Aimed at the many Londoners who visit Cornwall every year and are interested in preserving the Cornish coast, the DOOH posters will be displayed on screens all over city this Autumn. 

Tina Robinson, a diver and sea lover who founded Our Only World after witnessing the health of the ocean deteriorate year on year said: “It has been a great journey working with DENTSU CREATIVE. I’ve been blown away watching the whole team pull together to create this campaign, to raise awareness and help my charity on its mission.”

Creatives Leli Leitner and Coco Shellim added: “The oceans cover 70% of the planet, but most sustainability campaigns focus on saving the big, glamourous sea animals. SeAlive Tiles are a great innovation but complex to communicate, especially in a poster with very little dwell time, so we literally got to the bottom of the problem. We hope that the arresting campaign will encourage people to focus on the bottom of the food chain for once, and help restore the oceans from the bottom up.”