Iceland wanted their palm oil-free own brand products to act as a competitive advantage
at Christmas. What better way than recycling a Greenpeace palm oil awareness advert?

Our objective was to achieve the same level of public awareness for palm oil’s destructive effects to rainforests as the damage plastic is doing to our oceans (after its David Attenborough-narrated documentary). Some basic building blocks were missing: people didn’t know what palm oil is, or how it’s produced, and we needed them to be emotionally invested in the subject.

We made the issue relatable, creating a character representing all rainforest wildlife.
Rang-tan is our lovable guide to palm oil. We told her story through a children’s rhyme in
a 90 second animation, narrated by Emma Thompson.

 Rang-tan film for Greenpeace generated good interest, with an easily-shareable asset also helped to energise Greenpeace’s broad base of supporters and ambassadors. But the scale of the challenge meant this was just the first step. Making one plan at the beginning of our journey wasn’t appropriate, many incremental decisions were made along the way.

This led to a world first: an entirely recycled advert. Rang-tan was reused for Iceland supermarket, highlighting the palm oil-free own-brand products. UK broadcast rules are very specific around “political” advertising, so (after months of negotiation) we were in a situation where we couldn’t play out on broadcast TV and then were transparent about this information - pushing the story to media in advance of launch.

RESULTS

• 70m views - the most viewed, shared and commented-on UK Christmas ad of all time.
  
  
• Launch week, Rang-tan occupied 88% of conversations about Christmas advertising.
  
  
• Thousands of news articles and over 200 broadcast news appearances.
  
  
• Driven 10,000% increase online information requests about palm oil.
  
  
• Two petitions have over a million signatures supporting the cause.
  
  
• Iceland palm oil-free Luxury Mince Pies sales are +11% YOY.
  
  
• Consideration of Iceland among consumers in the supermarket sector shot up 5.9
  points to a score of 21.6 - the highest of any retailer on the YouGov BrandIndex.
  
  
• And Wilmar, 40% of the palm oil market, has agreed to step-up efforts to combat deforestation - a game-changing move for the environment, with the rest of the market is likely to follow. Making Iceland global trailblazers for palm oil. 

For more information visit
www.greenpeace.org.uk