We Vote 4 the Ocean

In an election cycle, it's even more difficult than usual to break through the noise and make your issue salient, which is why we were psyched when we saw the Vote4Stuff campaign: 

"a nonpartisan creation of Leonardo DiCaprio and Tobey Maguire encouraging young people to register to vote and to get to the polls November 6th, wants to hear what you want to vote for, silly or serious." (Rolling Stone)

We choose our campaigns based on what we anticipate will give the highest return, so when this campaign was announced, we jumped on the opportunity to create our own #Vote4theOcean response video overnight. 

The next morning, we shared the video with our network via our Tide Report, and with the #vote4stuff campaign via YouTube, Twitter and Facebook. We also included links to conservation campaigns in our video description, and provided pathways to action for viewers.

Within hours, Leonardo DiCaprio shared with his 3.5 million Twitter followers and 3.6 million Facebook fans. We've tracked over 350 social mentions to date, and have gotten over 2000 views of the video (more than any other Vote4Stuff response video).

Our model of quick, responsive campaigning based on trending current events and online conversations is proving to be a successful way to reach new audiences on a daily basis. By de-emphasizing our brand and embracing our informal, internet-savvy voice, we are able to inject ocean conservation messaging into broader conversations.

We are also encouraging more people in the ocean community to make videos of their own. This morning, the nudibranch research lab at the California Academy of Sciences released their own video. Check it out, share it, and make your own #vote4theocean video (and don't forget to tag it with #vote4stuff!)