The Brief
The Solution
How can we ensure people innovate ethically in bp?
While some organisations live by the mantra “move fast and break things,” BP has a more careful and considered approach.
With the rise in artificial intelligence and the quest for digital innovation, BP wanted to build a culture of digital ethics within its organisation to reduce the risk of unintended consequences occurring as it embarks on its journey of technical transformation.
Our brief was to create something humorous, absurd and abstract (BoJack Horseman was referenced as a source of inspiration) while telling the story of why ethics is important, generating interest and engagement with the subject matter.
As we embarked on our discovery it became clear that digital ethics can sometimes be the elephant in the room when it comes to innovation. People know it’s there but can avoid it as a subject for discussion when factors like tight deadlines, financial pressures and market demands compete for attention.
We came up with the character of “B-Lon Tusk” a memetic, sticky representative for digital ethics that encourages people to stop and “think ethics” because taking a moment to pause and evaluate the situation will lead to the development of better, more inclusive products.
This has led to the elephant being used as a positive symbol to signify the need to “think ethics” throughout bp.
Our Approach
We broke the campaign into needing to achieve three aims:
• Aware: Making people aware of digital ethics
• Care: Making people care about digital ethics and understand why it is important
• Prepare: Preparing people with the tools to take action
This manifested in “Special Delivery” a fun and playful campaign that saw an inflatable elephant arrive at the bp offices – quite literally putting “the elephant in the room” when it comes to digital ethics.
On the day of the shoot, we filmed user-generated content of the elephant being moved around the bp offices, which was shared across social channels. This aimed to hook people in, generate discussion and inspire people to “find out more”.
The footage captured during the shoot was also edited into a short feature film, which playfully conveyed key messages at the heart of the campaign while creating a bank of content that could be shared across digital channels.
After the release of the launch film, the inflatable elephant appeared in bp foyers, grabbing people’s attention and making people stop and consider, “Why is it there? What does it represent?”
Posters, desk drops and ethical challenges shared on digital channels also aimed to get people thinking about the subject matter because “thinking ethics” is like developing muscle memory that improves with use over time.
We also helped to brand and develop bp’s Innovation Assessment Tool which teams have to ultise with digital projects they undertake – all with our beloved B-lon Tusk imagery.
