The opportunity

There is an opportunity to bring fragmented Reef protection efforts and stakeholders together through powerful symbolism and shared cause. Reposition the problem as on our doorstep, instead of far from home as it is presently perceived. Frame climate impacts on Reef communities in a similar way to better known ecological challenges such as bushfires and floods. Empower individual Australians to join the front line and rise to this challenge together.​

Cultural significance

Queenslanders are Australia’s most hardened and resilient state or territory. They live on the front line of climate change, on the doorstep of the Great Barrier Reef and will fight to protect it for family, for pride, for legacy and for survival. Flooding, bushfires, COVID-19 and other natural and man-made impacts have knocked us to the ground, but we always get back up. ​

The brief

We need to mobilise Aussies in response to this summer’s imminent mass coral bleaching event through a significant, co-ordinated national campaign that encourages action on climate change at an individual level.​

The business problem

The Great Barrier Reef Foundation has 400+ projects along the length of the Great Barrier Reef across a wide range of impact/focus areas. These projects range in size, funding and the ecological challenge they mitigate or solve. The Foundation needs a golden thread, a symbolic tool that brings their entire program under one flag and inspires Australians to learn more and help protect the Reef. ​

The campaign narrative

Queensland’s east coast is on the front line of climate change in Australia.​​

Our community of changemakers gather on this line, live on this line, draw this line, and make this line stronger with every cumulative action.​
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Symbolically, this innocuous, ambling coastal outline can be repositioned as a distinctive and repeatable symbol representing a) the ‘front line’ of coral reef protection, b) the community that live on it, and c) the ‘front line’ of climate change in Australia. ​

Through this integrated campaign, we provide the presently absent golden thread to link the currently disparate assortment of Reef protection activities and volunteering programs, unifying them all as contributors to and members of this, the front line.