MUMBAI: As a part of their initiative to save the endangered turtles species, men’s lifestyle brand Turtle Limited, has launched a campaign called #SaveLittleShelly.
The film opens up with an interesting animated character of little Shelly in a four part digital campaign. An initiative during the World Turtle Month, the #SaveLittleShelly is an extended campaign to the company’s campaign last year.
#SaveLittleShelly is launched as a hashtag on social media as the story of Shelly, a baby turtle with a cute shell, making her journey from the nest to the sea, braving all dangers that come in the way. A unique animated social initiative, it is a two minute YouTube film broken down into four stages. At the end of each stage, viewers are asked to help Shelly complete the next leg of her journey by likes. Every new stage of the film was released only after a certain number of likes at the end of the previous stage. Gradually four stages of the film made it to YouTube. Finally, on World Turtle Day, people were able to see the entire film.
Speaking on this campaign, JWT creative art director Arjun Mukherjee said, “The entire idea was to raise awareness of the plight of the turtles, who are facing extinction, in an interesting and engaging manner. So we wanted to give people, hands on opportunity to save a turtle. The month long initiative saw the creation of a cute virtual turtle that can move a step forward towards survival only when one donates. While the actual donations went towards the conservation of turtles and their environment, thousands of people logged in everyday to watch the journey of Shelly the Turtle and helped spread the word.”
Celebrated on 23 May, 2015, World Turtle Day is dedicated to the salvation of these marvellous creatures that have inhabited this planet for the last 200 million years. To build buzz around #SaveLittleShelly campaign, the social media was flooded with interesting posts, ads and every Turtle shop in the country was speckled with posters that talked about the drive and the cause. Store merchandise were designed around Shelly and distributed to customers, who spread the word and drove the initiative both on social media platform and the personal front.
Commenting on this initiative, Turtle director Shitanshu Jhunjhunwala said, “Turtles have been around for 200 million years, yet they are rapidly disappearing as a result of smuggling, the exotic food industry, habitat destruction, global warming and the cruel pet trade. Keeping in mind this sad state of turtle globally, we thought of launching a month long campaign instead of celebrating a single day to raise awareness to save turtles.”
With a 360 degree engaging campaign from a small message to a big-hearted donation drive, this campaign shows a simple idea can spread through word of mouth and create maximum impact.
