The archive · PR & Stunts · Marketing decision · 2017
Greenpeace beaches a 73-foot 'dead whale' made of plastic — Ad Stars Outdoor Grand Prix
Dentsu Jayme Syfu beached a giant dead whale built from plastic waste on Manila Bay — zero media spend, 1.5 billion impressions.
Greenpeace Philippines · Dentsu Jayme Syfu
What it had to solve
The Philippines ranks third in the world for mishandled plastic waste, and whales washing ashore with stomachs full of plastic were becoming routine news. Greenpeace Philippines wanted ASEAN leaders at the 2017 Manila summit to commit to concrete action on marine plastic pollution — with almost no media budget.
How it works
The Philippines is made of 7,100 islands and ranks third in the world for mishandled plastic waste. Beached whales with stomachs full of plastic were appearing in the news often enough to stop being shocking, and Greenpeace wanted ASEAN leaders gathering in Manila in 2017 to take concrete measures against marine plastic pollution.
Dentsu Jayme Syfu's answer was Dead Whale: a 73-foot, life-size sculpture of a decomposing blue whale, built entirely from plastic waste. The team chose plastics by colour instead of painting them, used PET bottles as baleen, stuffed the innards with red net sacks full of bottles, and installed the whale on the shore of Naic, Cavite — part of one of the country's most polluted waters, Manila Bay.
Unveiled on 11 May 2017 during the ASEAN summit on coastal and marine development, the whale looked so real that people approached it with genuine grief, posting long captions about refusing plastic. The shock of discovering it was an installation made the point: this is what our waste does. With zero media spend, the campaign reached 1.5 billion impressions in over 100 countries and was featured on more than 1,600 websites.
The campaign became one of the Philippines' most celebrated purpose-driven works, winning the Ad Stars 2018 Outdoor Grand Prix, a Cannes Lions 2018 Gold for Outdoor and Silver for Design, a Cresta Grand Prix and D&AD Impact pencils. Greenpeace dismantled the whale after three days and sent every piece of plastic to recycling; offices in East Asia, Greece and Spain later built their own versions.
Why it lands
- It recreated an image people already empathize with — a beached whale — instead of showing abstract pollution statistics.
- The fake-then-real reveal converted empathy into shock: the public believed they were mourning a whale, then learned the whale was made of their own waste.
- Placing it on an actually polluted beach made the medium part of the message, and the site itself proved the problem.
- The monument was the media: at zero spend, every photo, caption and share became distribution, reaching 1.5 billion impressions.
- Timing it to the ASEAN summit put the image in front of the leaders Greenpeace needed to move.
What it did
The stunt cost zero media spend yet generated 1.5 billion impressions across more than 100 countries and coverage on over 1,600 unique sites. It won the Ad Stars 2018 Outdoor Grand Prix, a Cannes Lions 2018 Gold for Outdoor, a Cresta Grand Prix and D&AD Impact pencils, and it pushed marine-plastic action onto the ASEAN agenda.
What you can take
Make an invisible problem visible at its true scale: a monument people can walk up to turns an ocean-plastic statistic into grief — the reveal that it is man-made turns grief into action.
Since then
After three days on the beach the sculpture was dismantled by Greenpeace, with all plastic sent to recycling so no waste returned to the water. The campaign continued as 'The Dead Whale Movement': Greenpeace's East Asia office made its own film from the footage, Greek and Spanish offices built replicas, and teams in Spain, Malta, Italy and Lebanon asked for a manual to recreate the stunt on their own shores. Greenpeace Philippines' executive director Yeb Sano and the agency team kept the work in the conversation as the global face of the organization's plastics campaign.
Sources
- TBWASantiago Mangada Puno and Dentsu Jayme Syfu shine with Grand Prix wins at AD STARS 2018
- Lead by a dead whale — Dentsu Jayme Syfu's Cresta Grand Prix winning campaign
- The Work that Won at Cannes Lions 2018
- Deadwhale (2017) — Galing Pilipinas campaign spotlight
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