Why? Why Not?
Climate Reality Project
Issue 34 | March 2015
Agency
GPY&R
Creative Team
Executive Creative Directors David Joubert Bart Pawlak Chief Creative Officer Ben Coulson Art Director David Joubert Copywriter Bart Pawlak Senior Designer Alex Lezberg
Production Team
Head of Production Elissa Maine Producer Sam Yeomans Production House Blue State Digital UX Designer Daniel Atwood Senior Web Developer Paul Chamberlain Project Managers Vivian Xie Stephanie Cohen
Other Credits
Chief Strategy Officer Jon Steel Strategic Director Lucielle Vardy Group Planning Director Melissa Parsey Senior Social Media Strategist Katie Newport Group Managing Director Andrew Dowling Senior Account Manager Kate Kopperman Account Coordinator Daniel Heller GAD Y&R New York David Sharrod Account Director Alex Mather The Futures Company Will Galgey
Date
September 2014
Background
On the 23rd of September 2014, the world's leaders gathered in New York, to attend the United Nations Climate Summit. On the agenda was the urgent action needed to preserve the planet and the future of mankind. A campaign was created that made it unlike any other previous global summit. For the first time a voice was given to the group that had most to win or lose from the decisions that were to be made – children.
Idea
The campaign started by inspiring kids to ask the two questions kids everywhere ask, 'Why?' and 'Why not?'
To win the opportunity to be the voice of their generation, children were asked to submit videos in which they asked the 'Why?' and 'Why Not?' questions they wanted to put to the world's leaders.
Eight were selected by former Vice- President Al Gore and his team at Climate Reality Project. In collaboration with Vice Media around the world, they put together a moving plea to the politicians. They were then invited to the UN itself as their film was screened for the opening of the summit. Their message was introduced by UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon, actress Li Bing Bing and was seen by a total of 160 world leaders.
Results
The campaign received thousands of video auditions from young people across 87 countries. The initial recruitment and vlogger videos alone generated almost 10 million views in the first 4 days.
The AskWhyWhyNot landing page received more than 2 million clicks and over 450 million impressions.
It attracted global media attention reaching 95 million people. It armed a 400,000 strong rally that stretched 80 blocks of Manhattan on the day of the summit. Importantly, it gave birth to an ideology of interrogation, one which set a different tone for the discussions that followed. And which continued to gather momentum in the approach to the next global gathering in Paris in December 2015.
Our Thoughts
This is the campaign that so many creative people have wanted to make. I’ve even made the suggestion myself a couple of times, wouldn’t it be great to get a child to address the UN on the state of the world we are bequeathing his/her generation? It has always seemed too ambitious an idea to actually pull off but now GPY&R have gone and done it and big respect to them. If the creative team deserve plaudits so too does the account management team for what must have been a seriously demanding task. Good also to see in the credits the name of Jon Steel, my former chum at BMP and now global planning guru for WPP.