Case Study: If Nature Counts, We Need to Start Counting Nature
A brilliant campaign from the Department of Conservation in New Zealand helps us rethink how we count and count on nature.
As someone who has worked for nearly two decades in and around marketing and advertising, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about how to:
A) Get people to think about something the don’t usually think about
B) Get people to think about something they don’t want to think about
C) Get people to think more deeply about something they already think about
D) Get people to rethink something they already think about (i.e. change their mind)
Each client and brief requires a different response, but they usually fall generally in one of those four categories. And despite what some people in my industry will tell you, we rarely create an ad or experience that directly gets someone to do anything. (About 8% of people drive 85% of website banner ad clicks, for example.) The best we can hope for is driving consideration or reconsideration, and grabbing a little space in your brain so the next time you buy, you think about our client.
To be a bit of a bummer, biodiversity loss falls into an even more difficult fifth space - get people to think about something that they may be at least partially at fault for.
Humans represent just 0.01% of all life on Earth by biomass, but have caused the loss of 83% of all wild mammals and half of all plants. Yet, more than half of our global Gross Domestic Product relies at least somewhat on nature.
Between 2018 and 2022, the WWF (the World Wildlife Fund, not the World Wrestling Federation) surveyed nine countries across Asia, Africa and South America* to better understand our understanding of the importance of biodiversity.
…while 79% percent of respondents connect things like “balance in the natural order” or “climate control” with biodiversity, only a small proportion recognise the effect that biodiversity has on their own lives.
Not great, but what about in Western countries where our actions carry a larger environmental footprint and contribute more deeply to biodiversity loss? The Royal Society in the UK found that:
Awareness of biodiversity loss is lower than that of climate change, with only 49% of the public having engaged with the concept. There is also a gap in understanding accelerated biodiversity loss due to human activity.
I guess we should acknowledge the silver lining that people are aware of climate change? (¯\_(ツ)_/¯)
What about New Zealand?
Lush green landscapes full of mountains, rivers and islands. Next to ‘bucolic’ in the dictionary is probably a photo of Waikato.
Due to its isolated nature, New Zealand has an incredibly high rates of endemism, meaning they’ve got a lot of species that can only be found there. 70% of its breeding bird species and 80% of its native plants are found nowhere else on Earth. Yet, as of 2019, Victoria University of Wellington reported it had the highest proportion of species at risk.
The Ministry of the Environment in New Zealand asked its citizens about biodiversity:
When prompted, people claimed to have a good level of awareness of freshwater, climate, waste and urban planning environmental issues (averaging 75 per cent), but less awareness of biodiversity issues (60 per cent).
If one of the most biodiverse places on Earth, with so much native biodiversity found nowhere else, has relatively low awareness of biodiversity issues, what chance do the rest of us - humans and non-humans - stand?
Enter one of the most creative campaigns I’ve ever seen launched earlier this month by the Department of Conservation in New Zealand, where 70% of the economy relies on nature.
With a typical off-center, deadpan Kiwi sense of humor, we see a nature surveyor counting every living thing in nature to give us a true sense of the population of New Zealand. Not just 5.33 million humans, but 695 billion living things. (Silly humans, only counting themselves.)
The narrator reminds us that nature isn’t just a place we go, but it underpins our survival as a species, before delivering the insight the whole effort hinges on “if we count on nature, nature should count.”
In the main video spot and supporting website for the larger Always Be Naturing campaign, the creative leans into the ridiculous and humorous idea of counting every single living thing that makes up New Zealand’s ecosystems. By doing so, it shifts your frame as a human in New Zealand from being one of 5.3 million to one of nearly 700 billion, then uses that 700 billion lens to dramatize the stakes. New Zealand ain’t so small after all.
Not all 695 billion inhabitants are helpful though, and Always Be Naturing nods to this. In a playful campaign video, a lady in a possum fur coat collects material for her next outfit by taking out one of the invasive species from Australia. The website highlights that these (somewhat adorable, I must admit) creatures eliminate 25 million native birds every year.
Throughout, the campaign website brilliantly disrupts our normal processing patterns by inverting familiar statistics that people might otherwise tune out. Instead of saying 69% of native species are threatened, it points out that just 31% are safe. Turn to your left, now turn to your right. One of you three - and your entire species - is a goner.
But the Department of Conservation knows just knowing the data and having a chuckle is not enough. The idea of helping stem the tide of biodiversity loss is abstract and people might not know what to do.
Rather than introduce a complex set of steps, the campaign introduces the idea of Naturing - “what happens when we do things that connect us to nature” - and suggests a few ways to take action, written in the same humorous tone as the rest of the campaign.
Even though I have no LinkedIn connections in New Zealand, the campaign made its way into my feed and buried deep into my heart.
What can we learn from it?
Serious Issues Don’t Always Have to Be Discussed Seriously - In the advertising industry, it has been frequently shown that humor can be a key to success. Funny ads are simply one of the most effective ways to get people to choose the advertised brand. While biodiversity loss is a serious issue, when we only talk about it in terms of death and destruction with images of ecosystems destroyed by deforestation and wildfires, we can come across as a bit of a bummer. And while the occasional guilt trip can be effective, it does make it hard to engage and share amongst friends.
Break the Usual Patterns to Avoid Being Ignored - Recent research in the Journal of Communication has found that repetition can be a super useful communication tool - if the audience already agrees with you. If they disagree, you’ve got to find a new approach. So when need to make up a gap in understanding, you probably can’t just keep repeating the same statistics over and over again. Without getting new data, the Department of Conservation flipped the script to talk about the low percentage of species that are safe, rather than the high percentage of those threatened, breaking the familiar pattern.
Give People Something to Stand For, Not Just Stand Against - One of the traps that we can fall into in the environmental movement is to focus more on what we’re against than what we’re for. The Count brings to life the amazing biodiversity New Zealand has, highlighting that 695 Billion living things as something to be proud of. This puts people in a receptive space when the campaign drops the bomb that this point of pride is actually at risk. Instead of making people defensive, it puts them on the offensive and gives them some simple acts to make a difference.
The Always Be Naturing campaign does a brilliant job of removing the unhelpful blame for biodiversity loss and creating a vision of what could be with space for every New Zealander (and even you, dear reader, wherever you are) to join in.
*To be fair, the people in this study are not nearly as responsible for biodiversity loss as those in the Global North, whose economic desires have often driven habitat destruction in the Global South. And even rewilding efforts in the Global North may spur further destruction in the Global South.