ABSTRACT
In 2018 UK supermarket Iceland attracted global attention with a brand activism campaign that aimed to reduce deforestation due to palm oil production. Palm oil is in more than half of supermarket products and 85 per cent comes from Indonesia and Malaysia. Seen as a cause of deforestation and human rights violations, it is also claimed to threaten endangered species including the orangutan. Iceland's #PalmOilAlarmCall campaign supported Greenpeace in raising awareness of unsustainable palm oil and included the removal of the ingredient from its own-label foods. Iceland's campaign launch in April provoked international headlines, but a decision to use an emotive film, ‘Rang Tan’, produced by Greenpeace as its Christmas TV advertisement took the world by storm in November that year. The film was refused permission for broadcast and the resulting public interest led to it being viewed more than 90 million times on social media, becoming the most watched Christmas advertisement ever. This case study sets out the background to the strategy and the learnings from the communications team responsible.
