Crave partners with EcoMatters + Foundation North to launch world-first online platform

Auckland-based creative solutions agency Crave has today launched Guardians of the Gulf, a pilot website designed to engage and inspire more Kiwis to take action in improving the Hauraki Gulf.

Crave has partnered with EcoMatters to develop the platform, which is supported by Foundation North’s Gulf Innovation Fund Together (GIFT). Through Guardians of the Gulf, residents, businesses and non-profit organisations can come together to create and support campaigns designed to restore land and sea in the Hauraki Gulf.

Non-profit organisations are able to create ‘campaigns’ for Kiwis to support through donations, signing petitions or volunteering. They are then rewarded for their participation by businesses including Resene, Atomic Coffee, Big Street Bikers and Ecostore.

Crave creative director Hadleigh Averill says Guardians of the Gulf is the first platform of its kind to utilise environmental campaigns as a media channel to drive advertising and sales outcomes for businesses, while also assisting non-profits in engaging the public to effect positive change in the Gulf.

Says Averill: “It’s exciting to be launching a new innovative territory within the category. The platform and has the ability to engage a wider audience to clean up the Hauraki Gulf with the incentive of rewards. We are really interested in understanding the impact rewards will have on driving people to do good for the environment, whilst also giving businesses the ability to get their products/services in front of new audiences, effectively using the platform as a media channel.”

Guardians of the Gulf is launching with campaigns from three non-profit organisations: The Sir Peter Blake Trust, The Kiwi Bottle Drive and The Waiheke Resource Trust. Their campaigns are a petition to bring back a bottle deposit system, an education forum at a Waiheke café serving only recycled food, and a virtual reality programme used to educate kids in schools about keeping our oceans clean.

To do your part and get involved with the restoration of the Hauraki Gulf, visit www.guardiansofthegulf.co.nz.