The Adventures of Mr Splashy Pants: Lessons you can learn from the Greenpeace Campaign

What better way to raise society’s awareness of a proposed Japanese Humpback Whale Hunt than by implanting a microchip in a whale to follow it on journey, and turn to your supporters to run a worldwide campaign to help chose the whale’s name?

This was the idea behind a 2009 Greenpeace campaign to highlight a proposed whale hunt. Greenpeace turned to their members and supporters, providing a list of names including; Talei, Aiko, Miro and wild card entry Mr Splashy Pants.

When a reddit user saw Mr Splashy Pants a meme was born with a request that people on the site “Vote Mr Splashy Pants.”

In the below TED Talk, Alexis Ohanian one of the co-founders of Reddit talks about the campaign, and provides insights into the take-aways for Social Media Marketers.

The outcome, as the video discusses was the cancellation of the whale hunt by the Japanese Government, the naming of Mr Splashy Pants, and the power of what happens when an organisation loses control of it's social media marketing efforts and an internet legend is born. 

Mike Cullen has recently returned to Akolade after a period as the conference producer for one of Australia's leading economic think tanks. Mike began working in the conference industry in 2007 after looking for a career change from the high pressured world of inbound customer service. Mike has worked for some of the most well known conference and media companies in the B2B space and in his spare time is working on his first novel in a planned Epic Fantasy trilogy.