Our Work
Don’t be fooled by a smile
Over 3,000 dolphins are being held in captivity for purposes of entertainment worldwide. The industry would have you believe they are happy and enjoy performing. But the truth is, dolphin entertainment is extreme animal cruelty masquerading as innocent family fun.
We worked with World Animal Protection (WAP) to deliver an international campaign that would end this cruelty forever. We developed a digital led strategy that would expose the truth behind the dolphin’s ‘smile’.
We created a simple, powerful and highly shareable film to convey our core message.
We promoted the film and its core
message through owned, earned and
bought online media calling on our key
audiences to sign a petition targeting
the Expedia Group – the travel
company making significant profits by
promoting this cruelty.
With 190,000 signatures on the petition, Expedia agreed to meet World Animal
Protection’s campaign team face to face. But when they failed to agree to WAP’s full
conditions, we went to Phase 2 of the campaign.
We created the ‘Cruelty Behind The
Smile Awards’ and asked our ever
growing movement of online activists
to nominate Expedia directly.
Having mobilised our key audience, we offered them the opportunity to support the campaign financially too. Both online…
…and offline.
The campaign has generated over
300,000
petition signatures.
40,000
supporters have contacted Expedia’s CEO directly by email and Twitter.
2,500
more have signed physical protest cards.
Our online campaigners have donated over
$195,000.
Several major travel companies, including Trip Advisor, Virgin, Booking.com and Airbnb, have all agreed to stop promoting dolphin entertainment all together. And in February 2020, as a result of our pressure, Expedia agreed to update their policy, reducing from 48 to 28 the number of venues they promote.
Although coronavirus has temporarily held up the campaign, we have now built the movement and have the momentum. We will complete the job and end this cruelty forever.
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