Ocean Wise's Seaforestation initiative works to protect, restore, and enhance kelp forests along the coasts of Western Canada and Chile. These ecosystems have been decimated over the past 50 years but are critical to ocean health, climate resilience, and biodiversity. Despite the importance of this issue, kelp restoration remains a largely unseen and poorly understood issue. The concept of kelp restoration is unfamiliar to most audiences and kelp lacks the visual and cultural resonance of better-known environmental stories like coral reef bleaching or deforestation.
We set out to close that knowledge gap with the production of a video. The goal was to translate an underexposed ecological story into a compelling, emotionally resonant narrative that philanthropic donors, outdoor enthusiasts, and affluent prospective supporters can quickly understand and connect with. By showing the tangible, hopeful impact of kelp forest restoration in action, the video aims to build a foundation of awareness and understanding where little currently exists.
Beyond storytelling, the video is a strategic asset within a broader digital lead generation and fundraising campaign. Deployed across Ocean Wise's website, email, and social media channels, the full-length video and social clips were designed to spark interest, drive engagement, and convert new audiences into a pipeline of leads that feed directly into Ocean Wise's end-of-year fundraising campaign. The two campaign objectives are to shift public understanding of why kelp forests matter, and turn that new understanding into meaningful support of Seaforestation.
The project started with discovery sessions to align with the Ocean Wise team on objectives, scope, messaging, and logistics. One insight in particular that was uncovered during these sessions shaped the campaign strategy: before we could ask anyone to donate, we had to teach them why kelp forests matter at all.
Throughout these discovery sessions, the target audience was identified: 55+ years old, educated, and either a professional or retired professional, with backgrounds spanning philanthropy and charity donors, outdoor enthusiasts, and affluents with a high likelihood of donating. We also identified the most impactful key messages for the campaign and different methods of framing content across social media to ensure those messages were addressed.
The teaser and full-length videos were the emotional anchors of the campaign, built around real footage of the kelp nursery, kelp forests, and the team transplanting kelp in action. The video production process combined science, expert interviews, in-field action, and underwater footage to tell a story that was scientifically grounded, visually compelling, and showed the work being done.
Concurrently with video production, we developed a communications strategy designed to move people from awareness to conversion. Organic content on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and LinkedIn led with education-first storytelling and consistent calls-to-action, all funneling to a dedicated landing page with UTM tracking so we could measure what was actually working. The paid social budget was split with the majority going toward Facebook, which historically delivered higher conversion rates from the target audience, while Instagram was used for visual storytelling and top-of-funnel reach. The Google Ad budget was used to bid on high-intent search terms to catch people already searching for kelp restoration and ocean climate solutions. Earned media outreach targeted regional and lifestyle outlets to push kelp into the mainstream conversation in a way paid channels alone couldn't.
The biggest challenge throughout was determining how to create urgency around an unfamiliar issue. Our answer was to lean hard into tangible proof points and visuals of real people working with real kelp forests, rather than abstract statistics about carbon sequestration. Pairing the emotionally resonant video with a tailored strategy for each channel successfully supported Ocean Wise's goals of educating audiences and generating leads to feed into an end-of-year fundraising campaign.
The campaign's impact is clearest in its reach. The dedicated landing page generated 57,672 views and 7,130 impressions, far surpassing the original goal of 5,000 website pageviews. That level of traffic reflects exactly what the campaign set out to do: introduce a largely unfamiliar issue to a broad audience and give people a reason to stop, learn, and engage. For a topic almost no one had heard of before, driving this volume of qualified traffic to a page built to educate and convert is a strong signal that the messaging, framing, and creative worked as intended.
Just as important as the numbers is how the work was received by Ocean Wise itself. As Nic Schulz, Director of Communications and Engagement, put it: "Be the Change helped us to create a compelling video that got to the heart of our work to restore kelp forests in British Columbia... The quality of their work was outstanding, and the results exceeded our expectations." He described the project process as organized, respectful of his team’s time, and consistently focused on Ocean Wise's goals, indicating the strong foundation of a new partnership.
Together, the traffic results and client feedback reflect a campaign that succeeded in reaching new audiences at a meaningful scale while building a strong partnership to continue carrying out important work.