Agency: dentsuMB
Client: Ant Group / Market: China

Environmental campaigns can feel a little overwhelming, often conveying a sense of imminent crisis. Audiences can understand the implications of environmental issues, but feel powerless and do not know where to start. Alipay understood this, and wanted to encourage people to establish environmental awareness and easily achieve environmental protection in daily life.

Our dentsu mcgarrybowen agency partnered with Alipay’s green initiative, Ant Forest, to inspire their customers to live a lower-carbon life with easy-to- implement behaviour shifts. Together we created This is very Green, a series of films for social media featuring a range of animals in the forest. Our forest inhabitants explain how customers can play their part in a greener future, using a combination of humorous metaphor and hard-hitting messaging: an elephant tells us to use fewer disposable straws as it sucks up rainwater with its trunk, and a crab tells us to use fewer disposable chopsticks while flexing its claws.

The original films set out eight ways to adopt a greener lifestyle and were also created using a low-carbon method. We did not require travelling or shooting, which minimised our carbon footprint in production. The engaging campaign put across these important ideas in a memorable, clever way, ensuring the sustainable message was long-lasting for our audience, increasing brand loyalty and reinforcing a commitment to sustainability. Across two weeks, over 1.23 billion were reached with the campaign, and it tallied over 600,000 interactions globally.