Endless Ocean Video
Success achieved
Reaching close to 15 million engagements across social media platforms, using influencer marketing, user-generated content and paid promotion.
- Website
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0W9UPevkbW0
- Project dates
- March 2018 – December 2018; Video launched on 8 June (World Oceans Day)
Project team
- Michael Delle Selve - Senior Communications Manager, FEVE
- Campaign Lead - Nora Lawton, Managing Director
- Campaign Creative Lead - James Nester, Executive Creative Director
- Video Production: Stink Limited - Geej Ower, Director and Sorcha Bacon, Producer
- Campaign Project Manager - Christian Prior, Account Director
- Digital Strategist - David Leavitt, Director, Integrated Media
- Supporting Digital Strategist & Video Coordination - Laura Reynders, Digital Manager
- Content Creation & Community Management - Amy Louise Hendry, Editor and Beatrice Brandmayr, Associate
- Design - Nina Fareghi, Designer
Tools & Systems
We needed the film to feel raw and authentic, while retaining a crafted, cinematic feel. Shot in Mallorca, we set out to capture ocean lovers singing to Charles Trenet’s iconic song, culminating in a sunset toast shared by Danish band The Bottle Boys and pro-surfer Aritz Aranburu. To ensure relatability, we captured ‘interrupted’ everyday moments. Fluid scene transitions (e.g. a bottle picked up at the end of one scene and placed down by someone else in the next) ensured a sense of continuity.
Tools:
- Arri ALEXA Mini camera
- Flowcine Serene stabiliser
- Odyssey 7Q+ monitor recorder
Delivery:
90 second Hero Video alongside 3 shorter teasers/snackable content for social media use. Via an integrated ad campaign, we targeted users who had engaged with shorter videos to view the longer form content and visit the campaign microsite.
- YouTube video
- Facebook in-stream video ads
- Facebook Audience Network ads
- Twitter Video Cards
- Twitter Video Website Card
- Instagram Stories to drive to YouTube
Introduction
As the voice of the European glass industry, we wanted to champion glass as a positive solution to plastic pollution. We did this through celebrating humanity’s love for the ocean, launching Endless Ocean and our video ‘La Mer’ on World Oceans Day (8 June 2018). Amid widespread concern over our planet’s health, we wanted to raise a glass to our oceans’ health and position glass as the ocean-friendly choice. The campaign video formed a central pillar of our content strategy: an anthemic central asset celebrating human love for the ocean which could be easily shared across geographies. The goal was to create content which would resonate emotionally with viewers. Based on Global Web Index research stating 74% of Millennial users self-classify as eco-consumers, we classified our target audience as social media savvy conscious consumers – proactive Millennials and young parents who are keen to find solutions to their everyday environmental impact. By encouraging viewers to share their own #CheersToTheOcean message we expanded the video into a longer-term user-generated content campaign.
Discovery
‘Endless Ocean’ marks the third stage of our multi-year public awareness campaign on sustainability, celebrating the ‘endless’ lives of glass, following Endless Lives (2016) and Endless Chorus (2017). Building on the success of these previous campaigns, our members were keen to create an authentic piece of video content which could resonate emotionally with audiences across FEVE’s 12 European target markets, with strong potential for expansion into a user-generated digital content campaign on social media.
Ahead of the video’s publication, we launched a ‘Consumer Barometer’ on social media to generate new audience insights on sustainability – polling 6,000+ Europeans, designed to capture consumer sentiment on sustainability. In finding that 3 in 4 consider glass the most ocean-friendly packaging, we were able to tease our upcoming video campaign and engage our social media audience with the sustainability credentials of glass. The video thereafter became the emotional content piece with potential for a lasting social media legacy through soliciting user generated content.
Objectives
As the European glass industry, our foremost goal was to encourage more consumers to choose and recycle glass packaging. We aimed to promote glass packaging as a positive solution for society, by ensuring that its sustainability benefits resonate with consumers. To amplify these messages, we looked to deepen engagement with consumers and NGOs, and engage opinion formers, influencers and third-party endorsers. By encouraging social media users to share their love for the ocean, we hoped to drive awareness of glass as a packaging material of choice in a way that would resonate emotionally with the public and increase demand for glass.
Based on previous campaigns, we set KPIs of attracting video views, engagements, website visits and earned media placements as follows:
- Engagement: 770K
- Video views: 4.1 M
- Web visits: 45K
- Media clippings: 170
In the end, all of these were considerably surpassed with the video and associated snackable content exceeding 10M views.
Timeline
- Early March: Development of storyboard/script
- Throughout March: Briefed potential production companies and cast; solicited video proposals; negotiated music rights for Charles Trenet’s ‘La mer’; negotiated contract for ‘The Bottle Boys’ participation
- 29 March-27 April: Consumer Barometer survey ran on social media to generate insights on sustainability ahead of video launch
- Early April: Reviewed video proposals and confirmed Stink/Tickle as video production company
- Throughout April: negotiated with production company to finalise shoot details, booked actors/venues, invited influencers to participate in shoot
- 10/11 May: Video shot on location in Mallorca
- 16 May: Delivery of first cut of video to creative team
- 21 May: Delivery of second cut of video based on FEVE and project team’s feedback
- Late May: Sound design and mixing
- 4 June: final delivery of finished video content: one Hero Video (90 seconds) and 3 teaser videos (15 seconds each)
- 8 June: video launched on World Oceans Day, alongside paid promotion & news release
Activities
‘Endless Ocean’ marks the third stage of our multi-year public awareness campaign on sustainability, celebrating the ‘endless’ lives of glass, following Endless Lives (2016) and Endless Chorus (2017). When Blue Planet II came onto our TV screens in autumn 2017, it sparked a conversation about the impact our behaviour on land has on the marine environment. It is increasingly clear that the future of the ocean is under threat, and the packaging you choose plays a role – and we wanted to make glass part of that conversation.
User-generated content posted on Twitter
Drawing on a pan-European community of glass lovers, we took a stand on marine littering by
creating social-first content to resonate across channels and markets. We launched a ‘Consumer Barometer’ as a campaign precursor, generating data insights for an engagement hook on social media. We created our Hero Video ‘La Mer’ as an anthemic central asset celebrating human love for the ocean, which could be easily shared across geographies and expanded into user-generated content campaigns by encouraging people to share their own #CheersToTheOcean message. These elements all tied together for the campaign launch on World Ocean Day.
The video was initially concepted through a storyboard, with the creative vision being shared with 4/5 production companies who were asked to supply their own moodboard/creative treatment for the shoot along with their anticipated budget. Based on the proposals shared, we selected Stink/Tickle as the video partners.
The project was broken down into the following stages:
Endless Ocean Storyboard - selection
- Draft briefing paper for video production company
- Draft briefing paper for back-up actors/extras
- Draft questions for survey
- Agree with FEVE/local teams on questions and participation
- Set-up survey in SurveyMonkey
- Prepare ads to push survey
- Conduct survey through SurveyMonkey
- Send national SurveyMonkey reports to national teams
- Review and analyse results central and national results
- Planning Digital content
- Create digital content in various format (social posts, 10 graphs)
- Adapt graphs & social posts for local communication
- Draft central press release with survey results & Surfrider partnership
- Create local press release with survey results
- Launch results of the consumer barometer - online and to media WS
- Identify & negotiate with production company
- Identify and negotiate with venues for video production
- Book actors/extras as back-up
- Video Production
- First edits to video
- Feedback from country teams
- Final edits to hero video & 3 Teaser videos
- Provide translations for subtitling
- Sound Design
- Final Mix
- Final Delivery (2 June)
- Soft launch
- Online promotion of hero video
Given the complexity of managing a communications project of this scale across multiple markets and project teams, we created a comprehensive retroplanner to outline the roles and responsibilities for each group (i.e. central team vs. national market teams), and to ensure that everyone was aware what tasks were imminent and that key deadlines were met to enable the project to stay on track. The project was managed at a central level by a 5-person communications team from Weber Shandwick Brussels, with an estimated 550 hours spent on coordinating the video production and promotion between March 2018 and June 2018. A further 100 hours were spent on conducting the Consumer Barometer survey in late Spring 2018 ahead of the video launch on World Oceans Day on 8 June 2018.
Innovation
In recent years, FEVE’s focus with the Friends of Glass project has shifted from awareness to brand consideration, with the ultimate goal to generate lasting behavioral change through action (i.e. pledges to buy glass, increased sales). Creating data-driven insights to prove a lasting impact on consumers was therefore a key pillar of the campaign ahead of the video launch. In March, we issued a ‘Consumer Barometer’ via SurveyMonkey to gather insights about perceptions of glass packaging and sustainability. With 6260 completed barometers, we found 7 in 10 shoppers consider glass the ocean-friendly packaging choice. This generated relevant industry data for association members to communicate around for both media contacts and trade customers, as well as providing an engaging news hook to foster content creation and community engagement on social media channels ahead of the video’s release.
Yet while social media visibility of glass packaging is important from a reputational standpoint, ultimately what matters most for our members is translating engagement into increased demand for glass. To this end, we used quantitative data to evaluate how our social media work was effecting behavioral change, measuring audience impact via a Google Brand Lift study. Negotiated free of charge for FEVE, this impact study found a 13% uptick in public interest around glass packaging. This is directly attributed to watching La Mer content and equals a ‘Best in Class’ result for Google/YouTube.
Marketing
We took an integrated marketing approach, featuring paid promotion, influencer marketing, user generated content.
First, we conducted a ‘Consumer Barometer’ via social media to tease the campaign. The consumer data gained from this poll were used to raise awareness of glass and engage our social media community with the issue of ocean protection. We integrated influencer marketing into the video production, partnering with Spanish pro-surfer Aritz Aranburu and Danish band The Bottle Boys for the shoot to amplify the video to their own audiences.
Our Spanish team also mobilized local influencers through creating their own local video based on the central concept, focusing its promotion on Instagram and programmatic advertising, and commissioning an online survey by Nielsen to analyse the impact of this campaign and the on-going trends of consumers compared to previous years.
Next, we timed the video’s release to coincide with World Oceans Day, enabling us to make a splash in positioning FEVE and the glass industry as players in the marine conservation space at a key milestone moment. Over summer, we used a paid promotion campaign to ensure widespread distribution of the video, ultimately reaching 10.4 million viewers, as well as leveraging a Brand Lift study with Google to measure lasting impact on viewers. Finally, through our digital engagement campaign, ongoing influencer partnerships and media outreach, passionate social media users could join our toast by sharing their own #CheersToTheOcean post on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. This integrated marketing approach and community activation enabled the video to resonate long after its release.
Challenges
Bringing the video to life required balancing a complex set of priorities across 12 different European countries, from choosing a song and a storyline that is universal across different countries, to securing licensing rights to use ‘La Mer’ as the soundtrack, to managing cultural sensitivities in different markets in order to ensure that all stakeholders would be happy with the final video.
Given FEVE’s complexity as an association – consisting of a pan-European membership of glass industry competitors, some of whom support the Friends of Glass project and some of whom are not involved – we had to account for a number of considerations when planning and filming the production. We needed to manage expectations and balance the (at times conflicting) preferences of an industry-wide group to ensure that the final piece of content retained emotional resonance with consumers, while also ensuring that it had corporate approval from the individual companies involved. This meant avoiding the use of any product labels in the final video, as well as being aware of any cultural sensitivities across the different national markets: for example, an early scene depicting a humorous moment between a child and his father when he almost dropped a bottle of olive oil later had to be cut due to the importance of olive oil to the Spanish culture. Ultimately, being able to address these kind of market considerations was vital in producing a successful piece of content.
Once the final video was ready for launch, we had to manage promoting the video via a number of different mediums on social media platforms, as well as translate the video’s subtitles into 10 different languages – not an easy task when the lyrics of ‘La Mer’ retain a very francophone feel and do not lend themselves well to literal translation!
Achievements
Our objectives were to:
- Make glass sustainability benefits resonate with consumers
- Deepen consumer/NGO engagement
- Emotionally activate consumers to choose glass for the environment
- Engage with opinion formers, influencers and third- party endorsers
Ultimately, we achieved these objectives: Endless Ocean features a solid social media activation and an industry- leading NGO partnership with Surfrider. We also partnered with national NGOs like Legambiente, Surfrider in Spain and France, and the UK’s National Marine Aquarium. Over 100 influencers (anti-plastic movements, environmentalists such as WWF UK, pro-surfers in Spain, divers in Italy, media, lifestyle bloggers, etc.) were engaged to amplify the reach of our campaign towards their audiences. We demonstrated that a lasting impact on video viewers, with a Google Brand Lift study demonstrating a strong increase in interest around glass packaging directly attributed to watching our video.
Friends of Glass is active in 12 markets, so it was crucial that the video had relevance to audiences, no matter their home country. The iconic song ‘La Mer’ was selected due to its broad appeal beyond France, being easily recognizable and evocative of childhood. We subtitled translated lyrics in 10 languages. Towards the end of the video viewers were encouraged to share their love for the ocean on social media in the form of a visual toast accompanied by the #CheersToTheOcean hashtag.
The video is hosted on YouTube, but also available as native content via social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook. We also created short snackable snippets for social media use. These were used to drive people to the longer video, retargeting audiences who had engaged previously with our content.
We also worked directly with Google to help determine whether it made consumers rethink their packaging choices. Google isolated two randomized groups: one that was shown the La Mer film and one that was not. Later, Google delivered a survey to both groups. When comparing organic search behavior of both groups, the study showed that people who have seen our content are much more likely to have a new interest in glass packaging than people who have not seen it. In addition, the longer people watched our video, the more likely they are to have interest in glass packaging. In fact, we saw a 13.3% lift in interest in glass packaging and its effect on the ocean among people who saw the video.
Targets & Statistics
It is important to note that our ‘La Mer’ video formed an integral part of our 2018 campaign activities and figures for the video alone cannot be considered in isolation. For example, our later focus on soliciting user-generated content on social media was based on the video’s closing call to action for passionate influencers to share their wish for the future of the ocean via individual #CheersToTheOcean toasts.
Setting a 2018 goal of 770,000 engagements with all our Endless Ocean-related social media content across the year (based on our campaign performance in previous years), in the end we achieved almost 15 million campaign engagements on social media and surpassed all set engagement goals. This final figure consists of organic and paid engagements across all channels (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram) in our 12 local market across EMEA, including additional video content produced by our Spanish team, plus engagements on the ‘default’ central channel.
- Engagements: 770K goal, 14.9M final results
- Video views: 4.1 M goal, 10.3M final results
- Web visits: 45K goal, 104K final results
- Media clippings: 170 goal, 340 final results
What would we do differently?
In general, the campaign was very successful and we are satisfied with the results. One learning we would take away is the importance of ensuring that additional budget was set aside for contingencies in the editing process (e.g. additional unforeseen rounds of post-production edits).
In future video productions, we will also aim to find ways to make the video more localized to ensure a strong resonance in all our national markets – this would not necessarily mean having one European version to fit all markets, but integrating more local color, recognizable national influencers etc.
Advice
Be prepared to invest in paid promotion to ensure visibility and lasting resonance among your audiences – plan how you will phase communications campaigns to ensure lasting interest among your audience. It’s worth considering how you will demonstrate that your video has had a concrete impact on your industry’s bottom line (e.g. in our case, increased interest in glass – measured via a Google Brand Lift study) – this can provide useful evidence to support future investment by your association.
Pay careful attention to the background of your shots – make sure that everything is screened for potential conflicts of interest and go through with an eagle eye to avoid the need for additional rounds of edits.
Additionally, it’s worth taking your time to ensure that you have a comprehensive storyboard in place and buy-in from all stakeholders ahead of the shoot, to avoid the need for costly post-production edits (e.g. one scene featuring an olive oil spill had to be reworked to account for cultural sensitivities in Mediterranean markets). Clarify expectations and what can/can’t be changed once the initial concept has been approved.
Wider impact
Our members were keen to create a piece of video content which would resonate emotionally with viewers, bringing the sustainability credentials of glass to life through connecting it to an uplifting celebration of our love for the ocean. However, ultimately, FEVE members care most about increasing demand for glass packaging – and by extension, increasing sales. Through our Brand Lift study conducted with Google, we found concrete proof of a 13% uptick in interest around glass packaging directly attributed to watching our video – a true success for the glass industry! Furthermore, in addition to improving the image of glass to both consumers and stakeholders, through a year-long social media campaign, soliciting user-generated content contributions and driving NGO partnerships, we assisted in the clean-up and preservation of 300,000 m2 of beach and coastline – thereby increasing the association’s visibility at an international level.
In short, our campaign is directly relevant to the current zeitgeist around the state of our oceans. We are leading a global toast to the ocean on social media, while our efforts have increased consumer recognition that glass is the ocean-friendly packaging choice. As a broader societal conversation plays out around the impact of food and drinks packaging on our oceans, our campaign is actively tapping into this cultural awakening – and on behalf of the glass industry, we are proud to be playing our part in driving the sustainability movement forward. Online conversations about marine health and food packaging waste are on the increase and the Endless Ocean campaign is leveraging that global attention to effect a lasting social change in our consumer habits.
