The team at The Monkeys, Part of Accenture Song, working on a campaign for the Pacific island nation of Tuvalu, the result which then won a Cannes Lions Grand Prix, said it didn't feel like work as usual.
Tuvalu partnered with the creative agency and Collider to co-create The First Digital Nation starting with a digital twin of one of its islands.
Tara Ford, chief creative officer at The Monkeys, part of Accenture Song, said in a traditional sense, the team didn’t really feel this was a campaign.
“It was a first-of-its-kind problem for a very serious and heartbreaking situation,” said Ford.
Tuvalu, a low-lying Pacific nation, is at risk of becoming the first country to be submerged by rising sea levels due to climate change, she said.
“The First Digital Nation is a provocative response to a question no one wants to have to ask – ‘What happens to a country without land?’."
The First Digital Nation was a success as a result of the way it challenges people’s understanding of what a nation is in the physical, emotional, political and personal sense, she says.
“It will help Tuvalu adapt in the face of an ever-growing climate crisis while at the same time putting pressure on world leaders to mitigate their impact on the planet,” said Ford.
The work features an address from Simon Kofe, the minister of justice, communication & foreign affairs of Tuvalu, at the UN Climate Change Conference (COP27).
Kofe reports that due to the ongoing effects of climate change, Tuvalu may eventually be forced to move its country entirely online.
The Monkeys, Part of Accenture Song, used the address to get the heartbreaking messages of climate adaptation and mitigation to the right audience at the right time, said Ford.
“It was a way of signalling the much bigger task at hand. The address was an opportunity to capture the attention of people and governments globally and hear their call for immediate climate action,” she said.
Ford notes the concept of The First Digital Nation came about as a way to safeguard a culture, sovereignty, while giving the government both a framework and central entity from which they can continue to communicate and serve their people – even if they are displaced.
The project was a co-creation with the Tuvaluan government.
“We wanted to make sure this concept could serve their dual aims: digital transformation, as well as giving a crucial wake-up call to the world while there is still time to act. In that way, it’s a bold provocation,” she said.
“Just the other day, minister Kofe framed their perspective on the Digital Nation to us as akin to a terminal cancer diagnosis, in that having limited time ‘forces you to think about what’s important’.
“It’s incredibly sad, but that’s very much the position they are in. Making the most of the time they have left to make the onset of loss as manageable as possible.”
The creative agency and its partnership with the Pacific Island nation faced several challenges while attempting to bring this work to life.
This included achieving cut-through at COP27, says Ford, an environment that would be tough to stand out in.
“The world and global media are suffering from climate change fatigue. Familiar messages were no longer getting the attention they deserved, so ” she said.
“One of the hardest challenges was striking the balance between replicating the natural beauty in a digital space while communicating the impossibility of that endeavour.
“Te Afualiku islet was painstakingly recreated, making it feel incredibly precious. But we also embraced the notion of it being a replica – the implications being a sense of sadness and loss. That was fundamental to the execution and communication.”
Practical obstacles like COVID-19 meant that Tuvalu wasn’t accepting visitors at the time. The entire production was done remotely.
Ford said in Sydney, the agency painstakingly built a digital recreation of Te Afualiku islet based on photography and drone footage captured by the team on Tuvalu, who had to sail with their equipment to the location.
“For the COP27 film, the production was directed remotely, with patchy Wi-Fi. We had to send instructions and diagrams to the team in Tuvalu – including the minister’s friends and family, who were rigging up the makeshift greenscreen and holding cue cards,” said Ford.
“And with a limited window of time where the lighting was right, the team in Tuvalu captured the minister’s three-minute address in a single take.”
For Ford, the partnership with Tuvalu and the opportunity to play a part in such meaningful work was very gratifying for everyone involved.
“It is very much a cocreation and we will be led by the Tuvaluan Government and their people for the next stage of work.”
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