Born Free – #TankFree

Earlier today, international wildlife charity The Born Free Foundation marks World Orca Day with an integrated campaign we created, having won Ocean Outdoor’s annual digital creative competition.

The campaign sees Ocean Outdoor’s spectacular large format full motion out-of-home screens transformed into virtual tanks. Our #TankFree uses CGI technology and visual effects from The Mill London to create a series of life size animated orcas which the public are invited to set free from captivity and return to their natural habitats.

Over the course of World Orca Day, supporters had been asked to help free captive orcas by texting a donation to Born Free. Each £5 donation received causes a captive orca to jump out of the DOOH screen and swim through other nearby sites to freedom. Its escape triggers the arrival of another captive orca, which swims into the virtual tank, triggering further donations.

#TankFree featured today across five “hero” city centre locations including Westfield Stratford, London, the Birmingham Media Eyes, Liverpool Media Wall, The Screen @Arndale in Manchester and St Enoch, Glasgow, from where the captive Orcas were freed. A further six Ocean screens carried supporting graphics to raise awareness and donations at the same time.

Out of home and experiential activity has been supported by prominent Born Free celebrity patron Lady Victoria Hervey, who visited Westfield Stratford to see the campaign for herself. Born Free has promoted the day’s activities widely on social media, using #TankFree to encourage engagement across the country.

In just one day, the campaign has received over 200 donations, raised £1,000, has been seen in person by over 135,000 people and reached over 1.5 million people through Facebook and Twitter. There has also been a 4000% increase in people visiting and pledging to not visit aquariums with captive orcas on the Born Free website.

Celebrated actress and Born Free Co-Founder Virginia McKenna OBE said: “There are currently 62 orcas in the world which are forced to live in cramped conditions and perform unnatural tricks at marine parks and aquariums. This highly visual, dynamic appeal, created for us by WCRS and Ocean, will help in our mission to end the practice of keeping cetaceans in captivity.”

WCRS Creative Director Steve Hawthorne said: “Sometimes the most powerful way to get a problem across to people is simply to show it to them in a way that’s hard to ignore. Creating life sized orcas, in digital screens the same size as the tanks that many orcas are kept in, allowed us to do just that.”

Ocean Outdoor Head of Marketing  Helen Haines said: “Equating the screen size with the size of a tank is a powerful message. This campaign is a beautiful use of creative out of home spaces and it’s nice that the connection, interaction and positive action coincides on one day. This is a worthy winner of Ocean’s digital creative competition which looks to celebrate big, bold new ideas.”