Our oceans make up 70% of the planet. Many of us think we live on Planet Earth, but in fact, we live on Planet Ocean. The world’s oceans play a major role in sustaining life on Earth, but they are constantly threatened.

In the last few decades alone, humans have been squeezing the oceans to its limits. A huge problem affecting the health of our seas and the world’s marine life is Ghost Gear: lost, abandoned, or discarded fishing nets, cages and traps. Made from durable nylon it can take decades to breakdown and can travel vast distances using ocean currents. All the while it continues to do what it has been designed for – which is to catch and kill marine life.

Hyundai is a proud partner of Healthy Seas, an NGO based in the Netherlands which focusses on cleaning up this abandoned ghost gear from the world’s oceans. With Hyundai’s commitment to developing emission-free mobility solutions, and Healthy Seas’ expertise in protecting marine ecosystems, they share a vision for making the world a better place for future generations.

Hyundai, via Havas Media Germany and Innocean Worldwide Europe, approached the BBC with a three-fold brief; to promote their sponsorship of Healthy Seas, to showcase the work of the NGO and to showcase their repurposing of plastic waste in their new Ioniq5 EV.

Key goals:

• Brand: position Hyundai as a progressive industry leader in sustainable practices.
• Product: feature Hyundai’s new EV range, Ioniq5, as a sustainable choice.
• Statement: Hyundai is committed to driving change at an industrial level to create circular economies.
• Impact: drive awareness amongst the general public and automotive industry.

KPI’s:
Promotion across the month of August 2021:
Target audience: central Europe
Campaign hub impressions: 40k
Video Views: 1M

With a hundred-year-old pedigree in storytelling, relevant site sections such as Future Planet, and a vast global audience who have a keen interest in oceans and sustainability content, the BBC was the perfect partner to amplify Hyundai’s message.

Working closely with Havas and Innocean Worldwide Europe, and to align Hyundai’s brand with the BBC’s award-winning feature and video content, we formulated a strategy to promote the partnership between Hyundai, Healthy Seas and their shared vision around ocean conservation.

There was an opportunity to feature a story of redemption – from environmental disaster to actionable solutions and visible progress – with the main narrative focused on how the island community of Ithaca was left to face a decade long battle and an environmental catastrophe after a local fish farming business collapsed and abandoned the site.

Given the subject matter, the BBC’s approach focused mainly on the work of the NGO and the wider environmental issues of industrial fishing waste. BBC StoryWorks, our in-house content studio, produced a short documentary film entitled Journey to Ithaca which documented the Healthy Seas fish-farm clean up. It linked the common environmental goals with Hyundai’s commitment to developing a circular economy. This way, we could create an emotive, passionate campaign within that informative, elegant and entertaining BBC style.

In the film the narrator takes us on a journey of humanity – our impact, our inaction, and our resolve to make amends with the planet. We hear from experts, local characters, and volunteers’ part of the Healthy Seas fish-farm clean up, while also highlighting Hyundai’s input, support, and commitment to social responsibility, emphasizing their ultimate goal to use Econyl Nylon in all of its automotive products, starting with the new Ioniq5 EV. The film closes on a high with a global call to arms in the fight for a more sustainable future.

The film is available to watch on vimeo:
https://vimeo.com/670320235

As sustainability was the core part of the messaging, the BBC produced the film for Albert Certification (i.e. a carbon neutral sustainable production certification). Extensive efforts were made during the production of the film to reduce the initial carbon emissions from 5.28 Tonnes to 2.72 Tonnes, which was offset as part of the production budget, ensuring the BBC played our part in reducing our impact on the planet.

The campaign was a great success. In total the hub received 65,000 page views and the documentary was viewed 1.8 million times, with a dwell time of 3.9 minutes showing how highly engaged our audience was.

A major challenge for Hyundai was to increase recommendations, considerations and ultimately drive sales, whilst communicating an authentic message on sustainability.

To measure the effectiveness of this campaign, we ran market research via Adscore (an online study conducted by BDRC Continental). In the results, Hyundai showed uplifts across all key brand metrics, including a 33% increase in consideration and a 67% increase in recommendations.

The campaign increased awareness of Hyundai with an uplift of 2% in overall brand familiarity; 71% of exposed respondents agreed the BBC was the right place to advertise; and positivity towards Hyundai experienced an uplift of 37% amongst BBC consumers.

The Future Planet sponsorship delivered 1.5m impressions – 65% over-delivery against our original forecast. In total, the digital campaign delivered 6.85 million impressions.

The content performed strongly on social media, with the documentary garnering 600k video completes on Facebook across Europe.

The campaign received excellent PR and was featured in an interview with Hyundai Europe’s CEO on BBC Global News, in Meedia magazine, on Marketing Week.com, on Media Brief.com and in specific auto-industry magazines across Europe.

What was achieved in the waters of Ithaca was truly extraordinary. The clean-up wouldn’t have been possible without the support of Hyundai. The efforts had an immediate and measurable effect on the local community and marine ecosystem.

With sustainable programme-making at our core, the BBC was proud to be the media partner chosen to tell this incredible story. We were pleased to produce content worthy of the project and delighted that it resonated strongly with audiences whilst also exceeding Hyundai’s campaign objectives.

In Europe, Hyundai is best known for their “value for money” cars. But there is still little understanding of the brand behind these products. Very few people know the brand’s vision of “progress for humanity”, the company’s commitment to “zero emission” and their long history in research and development to become a sustainable future mobility provider. In fact, Hyundai is leading the electrification of fleet, championing hydrogen technology and a pioneer of “clean(er)” motorsports, but nobody knows. The launch of the IONIQ 5 gave a good opportunity to use the momentum and tell the story of the brand behind this stunning car.

As they are the next car buyers and key for EV adoption, Hyundai wanted to engage with younger people, Generation MZ (18-44y/o). The brand needed to increase their understanding of the brand’s vision and concrete solutions towards clean mobility, and to do that we had to go beyond the typical product focused campaigns.
Nevertheless, there is widespread scepticism towards car brands’ statements on clean mobility, and Hyundai is no exception. People think they are just greenwashing. Car brands are seen as part of the environmental problem, not the solution. Our challenge was to bring Hyundai into the limelight regarding their commitment to a sustainable future in the automobile industry and engage with a purpose demanding but sceptical young audience.

We had to come up with an idea that would help us connect with our target audience in a meaningful way and convince them that, when it comes to clean mobility, Hyundai walks the talk.

The challenge was translated in clear communication objectives and KPIs. Within our limited budget we had to produce engaging and enjoyable content, get an effective reach of at least 10 million, and lift positive brand perception and increase consideration within the reached audience.

How to get attention for a car brand of which many in our key audience think it is not interesting for them?

Our idea revolved around the “docutainment” trend. We identified this format to connect with our audience and tell the Hyundai story. Our strategy was based on establishing credibility by staying away from the typical corporate brand films and use a neutral and journalistic tone. We needed content that didn’t shout ‘advertising’. Therefore, we partnered with Discovery.

Discovery developed the creative concept “a better way“ – a 3 episode adventure to discover Hyundai’s better way to cleaner and more sustainable future mobility. The miniseries invites our audience to go on a journey with Bertrand Piccard – a world renowned Swiss explorer, psychiatrist, and environmentalist, as our voice. Piccard is one of the first to complete a non-stop balloon flight around the globe, he accomplished the first round-the-world solar flight in history and set a record for the most miles driven by a hydrogen car without refuelling.

The audience will discover through his eyes what Hyundai are doing to achieve zero emission. “A better way” are on one hand side the innovations of Hyundai, but also “a better way” to tell a corporate story. The non-staged interviews, paired with epic landscape and natural close-ups, voiced over by Bertrand, allows the audience to immerse and believe into the narrative.

The three episodes were titled ‘the vision’, ‘the reality’ and ‘the thrill’: Presenting Hyundai’s battery and hydrogen electric technology, unveiling an existing business case for large scale hydrogen mobility and confirming that clean mobility can still be exciting with electrified motorsport.

In these 3 episodes the audience understands through Piccard’s conversations with key protagonists what drives Hyundai, their strong commitment to research and a shared spirit to overcome boundaries and conventions of the industry. Piccard speaks with the real protagonist behind Hyundai’s innovations and not with the typical press contacts – for example the head of the fuel cell research centre, the head of the hydrogen power plant and a fuel cell powered truck driver, and he even takes the Prince of Monaco for a spin on the Monte Carlo GP track in an electric race car. This human touch is not only more interesting for the audience but makes the story tangible and the brand credible.

The campaign achieved the set objectives and over delivered on all KPIs.

To control and measure the effectiveness of the campaign we used a variety of methods and techniques. Discovery provided people meter reports for TV reach, we used Google campaign manager and freewheel to track the digital and social delivery and run Google Analytics over the landing page. On top we used a third-party research company for a brand and content survey with an exposed vs. control group methodology.

The campaign delivered over 24m impacts across all channels with an ad recognition of 48%. Therefore, we over delivered on the effective reach target by 15% (11,5million vs. 10million).

Our content engagement was with a 3,1% CTR 47% better than average Hyundai video CTR (direct buy VOD).
We achieved 196k page views (92% new visitors, +37% incremental Gen MZ audience share), attention and likability for the content of our reached audience was 23% better than on control (non-discovery/Eurosport viewers).
Positive brand impression was lifted by 52% vs control. Hyundai perception as leader was lifted by 23points vs control, familiarity with Hyundai’s innovation was lifted by 27%.

And finally, brand consideration of Hyundai was lifted to 30%, a 76% increase vs. non exposed control group.
And although this campaign was mostly launched to lift brand perception, it had a small business effect in France where more than 3,4% of the engaged audience went to a Hyundai dealer (taken from the tracked campaign exposure and the Google store visit goal).

Hyundai Motor Europe and Dutch NGO Healthy Seas approached BBC StoryWorks with a vision to promote their partnership and shared values around sustainability and ocean conservation.

Amongst positioning Hyundai as a leader in sustainable production techniques, one of the key objectives was to educate audiences around the facts of ocean plastic pollution. The goal was to shine a new light of hope on an overwhelming situation and provide audiences with a crucial message on the economic benefits of a circular economy for small fishing communities and the fishing industry as a whole.

The backbone of this project tied in perfectly with the BBC’s commitment to sustainable practice both on-screen and off. A primary goal of this project and a mandatory condition for any content production was that it must be carbon neutral across the board. By calculating our predicted carbon footprint from early emails and zoom calls during development right the way through to location filming and postproduction, we created an action plan for all involved to reduce, track, and offset all emissions.

The project was for both public consumption and for a live audience of industry leaders worldwide.

Key goals:

Brand: position Hyundai as a progressive industry leader in sustainable practices.
Product: feature Hyundai’s new EV range, Ioniq5, as a sustainable choice.
Statement: Hyundai is committed to driving change at an industrial level to create circular economies.
Impact: drive awareness amongst the general public, fishing industry and automotive industry.

Given the subject matter and audience goals, the BBC StoryWorks approach focused mainly on the NGO’s work. It linked the common environmental goals with Hyundai’s commitment to developing a circular economy. This way, we could create an emotive, passionate campaign within that informative, elegant and entertaining BBC style.

As a key campaign message was to promote the partnership between Hyundai, Healthy Seas and their shared vision around ocean conservation, there was an opportunity to feature a story of redemption – from environmental disaster to actionable solutions and visible progress. Plus, by giving their platform over to the voice of a tiny island community and their suffering, the film gave kudos to Hyundai’s commitment to progress.

The main narrative focused on a huge problem affecting the health of our seas and the worlds marine life, Ghost Gear: lost, abandoned, or discarded fishing nets, cages, and traps.

BBC StoryWorks expert team of storytellers set out to produce a film that travels to Ithaca, Greece, to document the clean-up of an abandoned fish farm wreaking havoc on the environment and local fisherman.

By interviewing key players who make it happen mixed with scientific experts, the film is coloured with interesting facts and arresting scenes of devastation and recovery.

Throughout the film, we hear from an array of voices, from UN Presidents to quirky local characters, industry leaders and young environmentalists. In amongst this, we weave in Hyundai’s commitment to social responsibility and close on a high with a global call to arms in the fight for a sustainable future.

The film conveyed the indignity of devastation at the hands of our fellow beings. Stark scenes laced with facts showed the challenges faced in putting things right. Contrasted with the warmth of community spirit, we watched progress take shape.

Along the way, the film highlighted Hyundai’s input and support as we brought the story to a close. The audience was left on a positive note with a message that ‘together, we can turn the tide’. A poignant reminder that this is just the beginning.

The team at BBC StoryWorks took the opportunity to treat this story with the same weight and gravitas as any BBC editorial production on the environmental challenges we all face. Through this approach in giving balance to narrative, facts and outcome, we worked to bolster the campaign with the same level of trust and concern as any other non-commercial story.

Healthy Seas NGO, as a result were inundated with requests for help from the campaign that, in total had 1,789,094 video views across all platforms. The video lasted around 8 minutes and on average was watched 62.11% through.

Video views 70% above targeted with article views of 65,000.

The campaign also succeeded in putting ocean plastics and its economic value on the agenda in Italy, Spain and France with 222,000 views across those regions.
Other brands promoted their uptake of Econyl yarn into their practices in the following months from October through November from fashion giants LVMH to sustainable interior start-ups.

Key stakeholders such as Healthy Seas, Kefalonia Fisheries (who’s CEO appeared in the film) and UN Young Champion for Earth shared the video and campaign link on BBC with a supported message.

Importantly, the Municipality of Ithaca used the campaign and its association with the BBC to raise funds enabling it to bring legal action against Piraeus Bank who own the bankrupt fish farm and have allowed its dilapidation.

The production was awarded an Albert Certificate of sustainability by BAFTA. Through the teams efforts to predict, track and reduce its carbon footprint, the project minimised 7.2 tonnes of emissions down to 2.6 tonnes, which were offset as part of the campaign budget.

With sustainable programme-making at our core, the BBC was proud to be the media partner chosen to tell this incredible story. We were pleased to produce content worthy of the project and delighted that it resonated strongly with audiences whilst also exceeding Hyundai’s campaign objectives.