Sydney, Australia – As part of its commitment to fighting climate change, United Nations Development Program (UNDP), top organization in helping countries eliminate poverty and achieve sustainable economic and human development, has launched what it say its largest climate advocacy campaign.
Titled ‘Don’t Choose Extinction’, the campaign is designed to engage the world in a drive towards a sustainable recovery from the pandemic.
The campaign was created together with creative and CRM agency Wunderman Thompson Australia, with global creative company Activista, creative studio Framestore, and IT service management firm Mindpool. It launches with a hero film led by Activista, which features a dinosaur addressing the UN General Assembly, urging the leaders of the world to not go extinct by their own doing. Given there is no silver bullet argument against climate inaction that appeals to everyone, the 7 billion strong audiences each cling to different excuses to justify it, and to curb inaction, the film will drive to a digital ecosystem called ‘The World of Excuses’.
‘The World of Excuses’, which was created by Wunderman Thompson Australia, allows users to click into the said ‘excuses’ on the website. Each is pictured as an asteroid rocketing towards Earth, where viewers can find information and tools to provide direct action.
The tools will be rolled out in phases in the coming months. It includes the ‘Chrome Plugin Thesaurus Rex’, which is designed to help people navigate the terms around fossil fuels online, ‘The Voice of Reason’, an Alexa skill that disarmingly rebuts every climate change myth, and a spin on ‘The Birds’ and ‘The Bees’, with an e-book that gives children the arguments they need to convince their parents and peers.
Boaz Paldi, the global partnership and engagement manager for UNDP, said that they wanted to spotlight the climate crisis and at the same time energize the debate about some of the economic solutions that are out there to get people on a path to de-carbonization, as addressing fossil fuel subsidies are a critical issue in the fight against climate change.
“The campaign gives hope that despite the trajectory we seem to be on there is still time to act and solutions to fight for. Creativity and technology are two of the necessary tools we need to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030 and move towards a green transition. It’s why we needed the best minds in the industry to partner with us in our journey to make these goals a reality,” said Paldi.
Meanwhile, João Braga, Wunderman Thompson Australia’s chief creative officer, shared that this behavior change campaign gave them the largest possible target audience anyone could have, and with 7 billion people to speak to and a challenge of this caliber, they needed deep creative thinking from every discipline.
“This digital experience is only just the start of our work with the UNDP to help end the excuses around climate change for good and provide people from all walks of life the understanding and the facts they need to make a difference. We’re even working to take this idea as far as outer-space, by naming real asteroids after these excuses,” said Braga.
Moreover, the digital ecosystem includes ‘Global Mindpool’ – a collective intelligence platform that empowers people to make their voices heard, playing an active part in building a more sustainable, equitable future through contributing their thoughts to large and diverse groups of global collaborators, with the aim of mobilizing data to help tackle the climate and inequality crisis and influence policy change.
UNDP said that its offices across 170 countries will be activating the campaign.
