Spanning over 8,000 km of coastline across southern Australia, lies the Great Southern Reef, an interconnected system of temperate reefs, predominantly characterised by kelp forests. Due to climate change, only 5% of Tasmania’s giant kelp forests remain. The forests are a global biodiversity hotspot hosting a wide array of species, including a high percentage being unique to the region.

We created a campaign to raise awareness of this issue and tell the story of how Google and its esteemed local partners are working together to study the remaining giant kelp with the aim of regrowing and restoring the forest. They are using Google’s AI tools to help speed up the enormous data analytics required to decode the DNA of the surviving heat-resilient kelp and map the remaining forests for the first time to support restoration efforts.

The challenge for the campaign was to draw attention to this hugely complex and largely invisible issue in an evocative way, in order to reveal the work being done to tackle it.

The campaign created works in 2 parts:

1. Highly digestible content in the form of a playful partnership with animator and TikTok star Sam Cotton

2. A more detailed micro-documentary

The creative partnership with Sam Cotton introduces the public to the project’s complex science in an entertaining way on YouTube and social media, priming them to learn more via the campaign's second pillar, the micro-documentary.

Live from April 2024