The archive · PR & Stunts · Marketing decision · 2020
WWF Germany names a new deep-sea species after the plastic found inside it
A real new deep-sea species found with plastic in its body is named Eurythenes plasticus, putting ocean pollution into the taxonomic record.
WWF Germany
What it had to solve
WWF Germany wanted a new spin on the old, familiar problem of ocean plastics that would generate widespread attention and action; the usual images of plastic pollution no longer felt urgent.
How it works
WWF Germany came to the problem with an old, familiar subject and a new demand: ocean plastics had already produced decades of shocking images, but the organization wanted a new spin that would generate widespread attention and real action rather than another round of awareness.
The idea was to stop illustrating the problem and start registering it. BBDO Group Germany attached the campaign to a genuine, newly discovered deep-sea species that had plastic inside its body and named it Eurythenes plasticus — the creature itself became the exhibit.
Launched in 2020 as an integrated campaign, every touchpoint led people to sign a petition calling for a legally binding global UN agreement to end marine plastic pollution. The naming was not a metaphor: E. plasticus was officially made part of the planet's taxonomic record.
The result was that the campaign's central artifact could not be deleted, retired or argued away — a species name in the taxonomic record is permanent. D&AD preserved the work in its awards archive as an idea lodged inside science itself.
Why it lands
- A taxonomic name is a permanent, verifiable fact: once Eurythenes plasticus is in the record, the reminder that plastic reaches the deep sea cannot be taken down when the campaign ends.
- Discovery is inherently newsworthy: instead of another image of a turtle, the campaign gave reporters a scientific first to cover.
- Naming the species after what was found inside its body makes the evidence part of the story — the specimen itself documents the pollution.
- The petition ask was anchored to a concrete new creature people could picture and name, not to an abstract plea.
What it did
Eurythenes plasticus officially entered the planet's taxonomic record, making the protest a permanent part of science, and the work is preserved in D&AD's awards archive.
What you can take
To make a distant problem inescapable, change the record it lives in: a species name stays in taxonomy after every campaign ends, so the reminder keeps working.
Since then
Launched in 2020, the campaign's durable artifact is the name itself: Eurythenes plasticus remains part of the taxonomic record, and the case is preserved in D&AD's awards archive. The archive page records no petition totals or policy outcome; what it documents is the decision to lodge the protest in science itself.
Sources
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