Ogilvy: Greenpeace Ocean of the future

The Ocean of the Future film was launched in support of the Greenpeace petition calling on supermarkets to dramatically reduce their plastic footprint. It presents a stark vision of our future ocean if action is not taken to stem the tide of throwaway plastic pollution.  

The campaign concept was inspired by shocking statistics, including that a truckload of plastic gets dumped into the ocean every hour. Since plastic takes years to decompose, almost every piece of plastic ever manufactured is still in existence somewhere on the planet – and plastic waste is set to double in the next decade if nothing is done. Rather than show the waste in its normal habitat, the Ogilvy team wanted to bring the damaging, ugly reality of plastic waste to somewhere unexpected: a usually pristine aquarium. 

The video, created pro-bono for Greenpeace, features a group of children on a school trip visiting Dingle aquarium in the Republic of Ireland. As the children look into the water at the Ocean of the Future exhibition they realise that they aren’t seeing colourful fish and marine wildlife at all, but single-use plastic items such as bags, cutlery and six-pack drinks can rings. While the plastic floats and glides through the water mimicking ocean life, the children realise that there aren’t any creatures in the ocean of the future, but only plastic rubbish.

Distributed using social channels and offline in a series of outdoor ads, the petition received 970,00 signatures between April 2018 and March 2019.