Sky Ocean Rescue
A digital-out-of-home stunt for Sky Ocean Rescue that turned passing phones into virtual torches, revealing the ocean's biggest threat wasn't sharks — it was single-use plastic.
- Client
- Sky
- Agency
- WCRS
- My role
- Creative Technologist
- Year
- 2018
By 2050, on current trends, the plastic in our oceans will outweigh the marine life in them. That statistic was the starting point for The Ocean’s Biggest Threat — a digital-out-of-home piece for Sky Ocean Rescue, launched on Plastic Bag Free World Day.
The installation took over Ocean Outdoor’s large-format screen at Westfield London’s Eat Street with a single, deliberately menacing silhouette and the line “Discover the ocean’s biggest threat.” It’s the kind of shape your brain fills in with teeth.
The interaction
Passers-by were invited to connect their phone to the screen’s free Wi-Fi, at which point the handset became a virtual torch. Sweeping it across the screen — with 3D, video and streamed data doing the heavy lifting behind the scenes — revealed what was actually casting the shadow.
Not a shark. Not a sea monster. A slow, drifting cloud of single-use plastic.
The campaign won the commercial category of Ocean Outdoor’s annual digital creative competition, which felt like a nice endorsement of the idea that a scare can land harder when the punchline turns out to be something you threw away that morning.