Heal the Bay, a nonprofit organization dedicated to protecting Southern California’s coastal waters and watersheds, wanted to make people realize they have a personal stake in keeping Southern California’s oceans and beaches clean through an advertising campaign that would make zero impact on the environment.
The creative idea behind the campaign needed to serve double duty: In addition to meeting our impact objective of encouraging people to keep single-use plastics out of the watershed it would be featured as concept/campaign art for the organization’s annual Bring Back the Beach donor gala. We had an additional goal of achieving a significant reach while keeping costs as close to zero dollars as possible.
Our agency took on Heal the Bay as a pro bono partner and ideated a concept that would serve as the theme for the annual gala as well as a campaign we could develop and execute to bring awareness to the issues facing SoCal’s beaches.
The creative direction for “Reusable is Beautiful” was to reimagine the way we see the garbage and plastic that washes up on our shores as couture garments. The final images are reminiscent of a provocative, high-fashion ad campaign.
By using AI, we were able to create all campaign materials on a zero budget with zero waste. The agency ran hundreds of prompts across the AI-based text-to-image generator Midjourney. We envisioned something set at L.A. beaches and waterways, but with an editorialized look that is strikingly unconventional for an environmental nonprofit.
Models are shown on the beach wearing clothing covered in the detritus collected from the Los Angeles shoreline. A trio of skirts are decorated in monochromatic plastic bottles and a dress reflects the colors of the water with turquoise and white discarded paper. A tuxedo is embellished with lost jewelry and sundry other found bling.
The campaign consisted of social media, digital display, limited-edition prints for the donor gala event, and OOH digital billboards donated by Billups. The media, which was donated, ran for two weeks.
Overall, the campaign raked in just under 15 million impressions with a media value of over $160,000. Since all of the media had been donated as a result of our agency’s partnerships and relationships, there was zero cost to the organization. Additionally, because of the use of AI to create the creative imagery, the organization saved about $60,000 on what would have been a costly photoshoot to achieve similar results.
The gala and Heal the Bay’s use of the creative for their additional fundraising efforts raised approximately $1 million for the organization.
