The Lonely Whale Foundation has got together with creative agency POSSIBLE to create a new PSA charged with stopping the pollution caused by plastic drinking straws. The PSA brings together an intentionally broad group of celebrities, admitting how they suck (plastic straws) and urges others to join them in this movement to stop sucking. POSSIBLE did the production, concept, casting and overall strategy for the PSA.
This humorous PSA draws attention to how 500 million plastic straws are used every day in the US. Many of those plastic straws end in oceans, polluting the water and harming sea life. It is a call of action to the fact that if we don’t act now, by 2050, plastics will outweigh fish.
The thinking behind the Campaign
We spoke to Ray Page, Executive Creative Director of POSSIBLE about the thinkingbehind the Campaign he told us:
“There are so many problems competing for people’s time and attention. How do we find a way into their minds and hearts? And how do we utilize the reach and power of celebrities aligned with our cause.
No one needs to see another PSA with some celebrity asking you to do something for a cause they care about. We’ve become completely desensitized to that technique. But a celebrity being self-deprecating — poking fun at themselves and admitting maybe they’re not so perfect, that they in fact SUCK just like the rest of us — well, that just might get people to sit up and take notice. And thus, #STOPSUCKING was born.
The campaign itself had several elements in addition to the PSA, including an experiential “Sucker Punch” activation at SXSW that was lauded by the Ad Council as part of a new model in the most effective way to execute successful social good movements. “
We also asked him why he felt it was an important campaign:
“The #STOPSUCKING campaign continues to raise awareness about how damaging single-use plastic straws can be to the environment, including partnering with an entire city to go strawless with the current “Strawless In Seattle” campaign which is receiving widespread national coverage.”
[…] have recently become a bigger issue worldwide, just earlier this month we covered Lonely Whale’s Stop Sucking Campaign which aims to highlight the huge use of straws and the consequences in the US, with the claim that […]