#SocialWin: The WWF's Mission to Stop Plastic Pollution in Our Oceans

BY ANNA BOWMAN

As the world's topmost charity for the environment, the World Wildlife Foundation's (WWF) social media channels have a global audience. The agency that manages their social media, Tug Agency, was challenged by the WWF in January 2019 to "galvanize people around the world to urge global leaders to do something about the plastic pollution crisis." Using a petition and the WWF's social media pages (on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook), the campaign was to encourage global leaders to create a global pollution plan to eradicate or, at the very least, decrease the amount of plastic pollution in the world oceans by 2030. The goal was to acquire as many signatures as possible prior to the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) conference in Nairobi.

“Leaders meeting in New York will in 2020 have the chance to secure a sustainable future for people and nature. The decisions they make in the next year will continue to have impacts for decades to come, and we all depend on them using this chance wisely. They must now signal their commitment to placing biodiversity at the centre of international treaties next year. Most urgently, leaders must recognise the planetary emergency we now face by working to secure an Emergency Declaration for Nature and People.”

- Marco Lambertini, Director General of WWF International

Considering the oceans and environment are two aspects of the earth that, if mistreated, can impact everyone, WWF International and Tug did not specifically target a single audience -- rather, they targeted everyone possible with #StopPlasticPollution. Most people who follow WWF International's social media accounts are likely animal lovers and those who consider themselves environmental activists, so Tug used a variety of methods to appeal to their audience's conscience: photos and footage of animals impacted by plastic pollution, facts, and other statistics that centered around the problem at hand. Most people on social media fall into the teenage and young adult demographics, and according to the Earth Institute at Columbia University, 70% of Americans age 18 to 34 worry about global warming. This means that those who fall into these demographics are more likely to speak out and do something about the environment, no matter how educated they are or how much they earn per year. Young demographics feel more passionate about the issues they care for, and with the amount of traction environmental activism has attained in recent years (especially due to activists like Greta Thunberg), Tug and WWF promoted the Stop Plastic Pollution campaign at a time that was both strategically efficient and effective in audiences.

Campaign Plan

• Goal: The goal of the Stop Plastic Pollution campaign was to get people to sign a petition against plastic leakage into the ocean and littering on beaches.
• Strategy: WWF and Tug  developed the hashtag #StopPlasticPollution on WWF's pages to promote their message and the petition itself. Additionally, many posts were aimed toward displaying the effects of plastic pollution on the animal kingdom--especially in migratory birds, like the Laysan Albatross (pictured above). Tug combined the #StopPlasticPollution hashtag and WWF International's already-existing #WorldMigratoryBirdDay hashtag to promote their cause, tying both campaigns together and urging audiences to clean up their local beaches in order to prevent this tragedy from happening to future flocks.
• Tactics: In the time of climate change news, the WWF focused on tactics that avoided pointing the blame at specific individuals, instead keeping the pressure on governments and global leaders who could make a positive change to the environment. Posts were both informative and a call-to-action, which kept the campaign professional and far from hostile for audiences they were aiming to influence.
• Every week leading up to the UNGA conference, the WWF International's social media focused on a specific theme in order to continue the journey they wanted their audience to go on. At the same time, these themes created urgency for the cause and promoted the petition by building momentum for it: 
• Week 1: Raise awareness
• Week 2: Context and complexity
• Week 3: Empowering people to bring about change
• Week 4: Maintain momentum, share progress
• After the Conference: continue the campaign to inform and engage
• Additionally, Tug created the concept of "The Golden Thread", a proposition to "come closer to our world and feel more connected to yours." WWF International and Tug broke this down into three stops in order to bring audiences on a journey:
• Awe: "the natural world is beautiful, incredible, fragile, and worth saving."
• Awareness: "the natural world is in real danger, but there are steps that can be taken."
• Action: "help us protect the natural world."

WWF International and Tug Agency conducted these tactics in a variety of ways they disclosed to the Shorty Awards. Stories were delivered alongside hard-hitting images to show the consequences of plastic pollution, and the potential dangers that could arise if the world continued to tread down the path of plastic pollution. They used reports that came out during the campaign's run as fuel to drive petition momentum, incorporating the results into their posts, like above. While #StopPlasticPollution was the primary hashtag for the campaign, Tug also used other individualized hashtags WWF had created in order to further spread the message, blending the primary hashtag and the others in ways to improve the campaign's outreach.

Why #StopPlasticPollution was a #SocialWin

Over recent years, traction for environmental issues has reached an all-time high. Individuals care about the environment more than ever before and one of the common gripes about environmental issues is how people don't feel like whatever they are able to change in their daily lives to become more environmentally friendly has any impact on helping the environment, especially when those in power -- governments and big businesses -- are the ones producing the most harm, and are seemingly intent on never changing for the better. WWF International's and Tug's Stop Plastic Pollution campaign came at the acme of environmental activism within society: people were angry with those in power and wanted a clear way to convey their anger about the careless acts against the environment, and Stop Plastic Pollution was a petition that could potentially answer their qualms. By targeting global leaders and encouraging them to do something about the plastic leakage into the ocean, audiences finally felt as if they had a major representative in the WWF on their side.

The Stop Plastic Pollution campaign was unique because, instead of just being a campaign meant to spread awareness for plastic pollution, there was a call-to-action -- the petition and its goal -- whose purpose was to be presented at a UNGA conference before global leaders. This caused audiences to feel as if their signatures could make an impact since they would actually be seen by people who have the ability to change the trajectory of the environment for the better, rather than solely being an empty petition bound to go nowhere.

How was WWF's and Tug's Stop Plastic Pollution Campaign Successful?

WWF set a goal for Tug to acquire at least 10,000 signatures for the petition by March 12, 2019, three months after the campaign had started. The receptive audience to the campaign completely blew this goal out of the water: the petition reached 44,199 signatures by the goal date. By the end of 2019, it had received over 1.5 million signatures. The success encouraged Tug to extend the campaign to February 2020, and they are currently developing a successor campaign, whose goal will be two million signatures.

Not only did the petition reach its goal, but the campaign Tug conducted across WWF's social media pages had remarkable outreach as well. Across three different platforms (Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram), a total of 48 posts on WWF's pages were made using the campaign's hashtag. These posts received over 9 million impressions and had a reach of almost 5 million. The campaign also won Digiday's "Best Social Good" award, and has been entered in the non-profit category for the 12th Shorty Awards.

Campaign Takeaways

The primary takeaway from this campaign is that, when a campaign is properly conducted, audiences feel impassioned about issues they care about when those issues have the potential to be addressed by those able to make a change. When it comes to environmental issues, audiences feel discouraged by the statistics behind how much impact an individual can make compared to how much of a difference a business could make, should the business incorporate more environmentally-friendly measures in its day-to-day.

At the same time, professionalism helped support the campaign. By not targeting specific individuals and conducting the campaign in a tactful manner, no one in the audience felt the need to attack certain people in power and there was no public outrage; rather, the manner in which WWF and Tug presented their posts only encouraged people to promote environmental awareness surrounding ocean plastics in a way that was peaceful. Rather than brewing in their anger online, people went out and did what they could in order to help, such as clean up local beaches.

With the public cleaning up local beaches, this shows that WWF and Tug did something right in their Stop Plastic Pollution campaign. People did not stop at just signing the petition and being done with the campaign's message; instead, audiences felt influenced enough to act. Not every post Tug put on WWF's social media pages specifically said to do something about plastic pollution -- instead, these messages made people come to the conclusion that anything they could do could help.