On 20th September, millions will join young people in the Global Climate Strike to demand an end to the fossil fuel era and climate justice for everyone. Our goal was to mobilize the biggest brands on the internet to the youth in solidarity through a Digital Climate Strike.
Client: Climate Strike Movement
Project Lead: Marion Linhuber
Project Coordinator: Dan Lewis-Toakley
Collaborators: Fatima Ibrahim, James Clark, Lisa Rose
Corporate Engagement: Bridget Sheerin, Natalie Hollier
Creative Lead: Samantha Whissell
Tech / Dev: James Singleton, Merrin Macleod, Tom Jowett, Wanchen Yao
Challenge
At the onset, we looked to the SOPA and PIPA Strike campaigns for inspiration. We conducted focus groups to explore the impressions of visitors to the sites during those strikes and found if faced with a black screen, assumptions may be made that the website may have been hacked or inoperable, and therefore closed/bounced too quickly to gain their interest.
We needed a solution that was very intentional and attention-grabbing, so we opted for a Green-out to mitigate the risk of losing website visitors.
Our next challenge was to entice companies to join the cause with minimal risk to business. The topic of Climate Change is very sensitive, and by asking companies to show solidarity AND lose potential sales with a full Green-out was likely to be too great a barrier to come onboard, despite the positive CSR their brand would benefit from. So we would offer three options for Digital Strikers: Bottom Banner, Full-Screen Modal and Full-Screen Takeover (full Green-out which would restrict all site access).
Execution
Volunteer developers created APIs for WordPress, Drupal and Shopify, and a Github repository for the more tech-savvy. These volunteer developers helped Digital Strikers with custom solutions as well.
Once installed, a bottom banner appeared (much like Cookies banners do) which announces the September 20 Digital Strike with links to the campaign for site visitors to also join/learn more. On September 20, the code automatically triggered the chosen Digital Strike (Bottom Banner, Full-Screen Modal and Full Takeover, or custom), and remained active until September 21. Visitors to the site could either close the modal and continue through their website, click onto a link to learn why the website was on Digital Strike, or (in the case of Full Takeovers) had to return to the site another day.
Outreach
Our Social Media volunteers raised awareness through donated ad spaces in Tumblr and posts on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Reddit and LinkedIn. On the day of the Global and Digital Strike (September 20), we geo targeted the section of Manhattan that the NYC strikers will be marching with Snapchat filters.
Social Media assets we made available to the public for their own profiles. Banner, Profile and Post assets were created for Tumblr, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter and Snapchat. A Facebook filter was created to overlay their profile picture, triggered to activate on September 20, and automatically deactivated on September 21.
Result
Where big companies didn’t pitch in, their communities did. Subreddits with over 24 million subscribers joined the climate strikes with pinned posts and banners promoting both the digital strike and the global strike.
The biggest story was definitely the millions of people pouring into the streets for the strike, but news outlets picked up the Digital Climate Strike too, from CNN, NBC as well as the New York Times.
The whole campaign was executed by a volunteer team of passionate individuals, in only 7 weeks (50 days) before the global and digital strike! We’re grateful to everyone who participated to make this such a success!
