A powerful new Digital Out of Home (DOOH) campaign challenging the captivity of great apes has launched on Manchester’s streets this week, as international wildlife charity Born Free partners with Ocean Outdoor to deliver a national creative that blends conscience with cutting-edge visual storytelling.
Great Apes: Not for a Cage is now live on Ocean Outdoor’s full-motion screen in Manchester city centre – part of a 14-day campaign rolling out across five major UK cities including London, Birmingham, Glasgow and Edinburgh.
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The campaign brings still photography of wild gorillas – shot in their natural habitat in Cameroon by renowned photographer George Logan – to life through digital animation and post-production by Neon Beast. The creative depicts the stark contrast between freedom in the wild and a life in captivity, aiming to spark public debate and political pressure.
George Logan said: “When I was a child, my fascination with wild animals would regularly take me to the local zoo. However, I couldn’t understand why I always left feeling a bit sad. Years later I would understand what I had been seeing and feeling. The demeanour and behaviour of captive wild animals is unrecognisable to those fortunate enough to live their lives in their natural habitats. It just doesn’t compare. And there are some animals which are really very unsuited to suffering life in a cage.”
The campaign’s arrival in Manchester underscores the growing role DOOH is playing in purpose-led marketing and the use of high-impact digital formats to drive behaviour change.
Shona Dobson, senior marketing manager at Ocean Outdoor, said: “Using our outdoor space to start difficult conversations or confront bad practice is a chance for us to work collectively and harmoniously to preserve the natural world and the planet for generations to come.”
Born Free’s new campaign coincides with the release of Our Captive Cousins, a scathing new report into the plight of great apes in European zoos. It follows the charity’s recent DOOH campaign across London marking the 10th anniversary of the killing of Cecil the Lion.
The screen space in Manchester has been donated via Ocean’s Drops in the Ocean initiative, which dedicates a portion of its UK revenue in media space to environmental causes.
