ABOUT

The overall brief was to raise awareness of Oceans’ mission to create sustainable, affordable alternatives to often overlooked household essentials, such as kitchen and toilet roll, also showcasing Oceans ongoing commitment to support to UK charity, The Marine Conservation Society.

We wanted to find a hook that would be easily relatable to Oceans as a brand. That immediately took our thought process to the seaside and the quality of our beaches in the UK. We believed this would be an interesting, impactful and potentially controversial territory to explore. At the same time, news had just broken around the live action remake of The Little Mermaid. This became an easy connection to make. “What would the Little Mermaid look like in UK waters?” Our belief was that we could create a strong, impactful image of that scenario.

With a client fully engaged in the idea, we then set about ensuring we made this a relevant idea. We sourced available data on some of the most polluted UK beaches. One of these would be our location for the photoshoot. Our goal was also to try to make our shoot look similar to the promotional shots released by The Little Mermaid, so we set about sourcing an appropriate model who would become the Oceans Little Mermaid.

We discussed suitable locations, accounting for access for the Mediaworks team, photography, MUA and of course the model and the client. We then sourced a costume designer. A realistic mermaid, but also practical. The model needed to be mobile, moving from location to location on our chosen beach. We eventually agreed on a secluded North East beach that featured among the list of the worst-polluted UK beaches. From that point, this became a process of timings and coordination to bring everything together in time. Our aim was to have the shots ready ahead of the UK Premier of The Little Mermaid. We knew media attention would be heightened at this time.

The biggest challenge was keeping the public at bay, shooting in a public area we knew this could become an issue and didn’t want any images leaking online prior to the launch date. It was important to communicate what we were doing to members of the public who showed interest and just answer their questions and our overall objectives.

The outstanding costume, designed by Emily Baxendale deserves special praise, as does the skills and enthusiasm of photographer Owen Hargreaves. We knew he was particularly familiar with this part of the world and that experience and knowledge proved invaluable on the morning of the shoot.

When you think you’ve thought of everything (and it’s a strange world when you start to think about mermaids on a North East beach), a school trip from a local school then turned up mid shoot! This was not in the planning discussions of ‘what could go wrong?’...a gang of seven-and-eight-year old’s shouting “MERMAID! MERMAID!”

The campaign reveals the harsh realities that human activity has on our oceans and the wider planet. Oceans hopes to drive better awareness of the conditions of our coastlines with the timely release of these images ahead of the live action Disney adaptation of The Little Mermaid, which launches in the UK this month.

From the initial idea conception to delivery was six months, but this allowed for the passing of winter months and the cinematic release of The Little Mermaid in the UK.

We hope that from this people are able to help Oceans on their mission to help better protect marine life with the everyday choices we make…even the mermaids!