In Canada, 57 million straws are used and discarded every day, and less than 10% of plastic is recycled. This plastic often ends up in oceans, endangering and killing marine life and other animals. Although Canada has recently announced plans to ban single-use plastic by 2021, there is currently no law prohibiting the use of plastic straws in Canada.

As momentum around the topic grew, Greenpeace saw the opportunity to take a stand and boldly proclaim that it’s time to end the use of plastic straws, for good. With limited resources and budget, the team needed a provocative approach that could live across multiple mediums and grab international headlines. The product: Stop Sucking.

The agency created a series of images featuring a turtle, fish and seagull choking on a plastic straw in a glass of water. The visuals were meant to be provocative and unsettling. To create the executions, the team worked closely with photographers to ethically and humanely source taxidermied wildlife, in some cases using animals that had been victim to human plastic waste. The animals were photographed and composited in the glass. Because of the visually jarring nature of the approach, the campaign ran in print and out-of-home.

Next, the team brought the campaign into the digital space. Those same images were launched as GIF stickers on Instagram, allowing consumers to shame businesses using plastic straws. The company wanted to tap into the existing behaviour of people snapping pictures of their food on Instagram, and turn it into a form of protest. The campaign rallied people to straw shame.

Instagram users could use the GIFs by first snapping a photo of a plastic straw in a restaurant or bar. After searching “Straws” in the native GIF feature on Instagram Stories, they could place the GIF over the straw in the image. They could then share the Instagram Story, tag the restaurant and pin the location, shaming the business for the world to see.

The campaign has been recognized by Facebook as a best-in-class example of Instagram Stories Stickers, and has been shared on their channels, at their sales conferences, and onstage at industry events. As a result, Facebook secured $10,000 USD in ad credits to amplify the campaign and the team worked with the Facebook Creative Shop team to create additional assets optimized for social to promote the GIFs.

Since the launch, the campaign has been shared globally through social media, print and out-of-home. The images have been translated into multiple languages and have become one of the main visual drivers in many international environmental campaigns pushing for the
elimination of single-use plastics. On top of this, the Instagram GIFs have over 4 million views and have been used globally.

The campaign has been covered by almost every creative industry publication, as well as multiple global news sources. With no media budget and what started out as just three powerful images, the Stop Sucking campaign has garnered over 700 million impressions to date and continues to grow every day.