Gerry Farrell Ink Ltd.

Client: Leithers Don't Litter
Product: anti-litter poster campaign in play parks
Title: The Pukemons
Media: outdoor posters with augmented reality, online film & drawing competition, social media
Country: United Kingdom
Date Of Campaign: October-December 2018

Background: Leith's play parks are littered with rubbish and local environmental volunteer group Leithers Don’t Litter wanted to do something about it. So, they applied for £500 (five hundred pounds sterling) funding to create a campaign that tells kids and their parents that it’s not cool to drop litter.

Idea: The creative idea was “Litter makes us puke.” To demonstrate that littering is a disgusting habit, we created an augmented reality poster campaign in eight Leith play parks and community spaces. We made five different photographic posters with a piece of litter featured on each one. We designed five little characters we called Pukemons who have a very strong reaction to litter (the clue’s in the name). There was one of these Pukemons hiding in each poster. To reveal them, parents had to download a free AR app (called “Leithers Don’t Litter: Pukemon) from the App Store for iPhones or from Google Play for Android phones, then get their kids to look at the posters through the mobile app. The campaign was launched at the local market where we demonstrated the app to around 200 parents and children. Litterpickers were provided and kids could trade the rubbish they picked up for Pukemon badges. We made a short film for social media to explain to parents how to use the app. In the second half of the campaign we ran a drawing competition for local primary schools where kids could design their own Pukemon characters.

Results: With £0.00 media spend and very limited production budget we reached about a thousand primary school children and their parents. Hundreds of them traded rubbish they collected for Pukemon badges and more than 50 children sent in their entries to the drawing competition. The app launched live at Leith Market to over 150 families and has been downloaded 200 times since. After its launch, the campaign made the 6pm TV News and the Edinburgh Evening News, reaching 50,000 more people.