Pacific Northwest salmon are essential to Washington’s environment, economy, and culture. They have been an integral part of local tribes’ way of life for millennia. Yet current salmon runs have declined to near-extinction levels. Salmon Defense tapped C+C and Invisible Collective to raise awareness about the urgency of restoring the region’s salmon populations by highlighting their ecological and cultural importance. The “Salmon Warriors” campaign focused on the Indigenous-led coalition of unlikely allies— tribal leaders, environmental scientists, government agencies, fishers, conservation groups and industry— coming together to save salmon. Audience research showed local residents were already somewhat familiar with and supportive of the issue, but didn't understand how truly dire the situation is. The campaign needed to engage a broad audience aged 18+ living in Puget Sound (also known as the Salish Sea) who have the ability to positively influence salmon recovery through their vote, network and local legislators. The campaign strategic plan focused on the following objectives:
Raise awareness among local residents about the urgency of the salmon issue and how they can help support (i.e. voting, posting on social media, caring for local ecosystems, supporting local seafood).
Engage coalition members and partners in the campaign to fund it and help shape and amplify messaging.
Develop a newsletter and drive at least 300 signups so Salmon Defense has an ongoing channel for sending the audience relevant educational content to keep them informed.
Strategy
The integrated communications plan paired powerful storytelling with the workhorse awareness-building channels of PR, social media and paid advertising. Messaging and creative strategy keyed off research findings that
seeing people working together was most motivating, and
tribal leaders and environmental scientists were the most credible messengers.
With this in mind, the team put the coalition’s own “Salmon Warriors” front and center across all channels, inviting the audience to join and become Salmon Warriors themselves. Hearing directly from the real-life, behind-the-scenes heroes would be critical to the authenticity of the campaign. However, given past broken promises and breaches of trust, particularly for tribal leaders, it would take considerable bridge-building to get these reluctant spokespeople into the spotlight. Additionally, since Salmon Defense is a nonprofit, the team would need to work with coalition members and their networks to fundraise the total cost of the campaign.
Salmon Warriors would not have been possible without significant stakeholder engagement held through a series of meetings to educate coalition members about the campaign, sell them on the strategy and approach, and encourage them to support the campaign with funding, expertise, and their own personnel. Over several months, the team secured the financial resources and other backing needed to develop and execute the campaign and identified and recruited the spokespeople who would be the voices and faces of the campaign. Through a series of pre-production interviews driven by deep research on each person, the team built trust with the spokespeople who would serve as the campaign’s talent. This culminated in a 4-day photo and video shoot at 12 locations throughout the Salish Sea with hours of interviews where spokespeople invited the team into their homes, onto their boats, and to visit their families and sacred spaces. Using these assets, the team developed all the materials necessary to run the campaign including a powerful 4-minute campaign anthem video and a 30-second PSA. The campaign then ran for 5 weeks in spring 2024 using the following tactics:
A robust public relations strategy was key to increasing issue awareness and gaining third-party credibility for the campaign. The team developed messaging and materials, trained the recruited spokespeople and held an invite-only launch event on the Nisqually River with key regional media to build momentum. Along with the press release and event, an op-ed penned by two coalition members was also pitched to marquee print publications.
The team developed and published campaign content and messaging for Salmon Defense’s channels, including its website, YouTube channel, social media accounts and a brand-new e-newsletter.
A partner toolkit with campaign materials, including an organic social media calendar, was created and shared with key partners and campaign funders to amplify messaging through their own channels.
A targeted, regional $200K advertising plan reached residents 18+ via local broadcast TV, public radio, digital streaming (such as Spotify, Pandora, etc.) and social media (Meta), leveraging a combination of awareness tactics (for impressions, reach and frequency) and conversion tactics (for website visits, video views and newsletter sign-ups).
Results
The campaign achieved all objectives and made a powerful impact on the region and beyond. Results included:
40,900 landing page clicks and 42,256 website visits with unique visitors increasing 11,407% during the campaign.
Social ads drove 415,000 engagements, 978 shares and 1,900 comments.
Video and audio ads generated 19.8 million views and 1.8 million listens.
13 partners financially supported the campaign, including six tribal organizations, three state agencies, and two conservation groups.
Five coalition members donated their time to be part of the campaign creative materials, launch event, and media interviews.
Key coalition member the Northwest Treaty Tribes penned its own op-ed, which was picked up in local publications.
Organic social content using #SalmonWarriors garnered 34,410 impressions and 2,725 engagements, while Salmon Defense’s Facebook and Instagram followers grew 340% and 467% respectively.
The campaign drove nearly 600 newsletter signups. Six months after launch, subscriptions continued to grow with low bounce and opt-out rates, and strong performance exceeding nonprofit benchmarks (47.9% open rate vs. 42% average; 6.9% click-through vs. 3.4%).
Salmon Defense was invited to spotlight the issue at South by Southwest, PNW Climate Week and Town Hall Seattle. The Mariners also honored late salmon activist Billy Frank Jr. on Native American night, where his son, Salmon Warrior Willie Frank III, threw the first pitch while the campaign video played on the jumbotron.
