Our Work

Woolmark

Wear Wool, Not Fossil Fuel

ABOUT THE PROJECT

Every 25 minutes an olympic pool's worth of crude oil is used to produce our synthetic clothing.

Studio Birthplace teamed up with Woolmark to create an extensive, worldwide, multi-facetted campaign to educate the public about the hidden impact of synthetic fabrics on the environment and expose the fact that most of our clothes are made of oil.

Directors & writers

Jorik Dozy & Sil van der Woerd

Producer

Lauren Havard

VFX Supervisor

Tim Smit

Impact

92m+

Views Across Platforms

200+

International Media Features

733m

Total Campaign Reach

10+

International Awards

"There is an urgent need for accountability and transformation within the fossil fuel industry to avoid the worst effects of climate breakdown - sponsoring major sporting events to greenwash their dirty business has to be stopped. In this film, we wanted to make visible the tremendous scale of our global crude oil production, and expose the extreme rate at which we are continuing to fuel our climate crisis. Together, let us stand against the exploitation of sports for corporate interests and advocate for a sustainable, livable future for all."

Directors Jorik Dozy & Sil van der Woerd

The Campaign

A full 360 campaign was created in collaboration with UK based production company Park Village and agency 20 Something. The campaign performed so well in the first 24 hours the client extended media to 5 new markets. The film was seen over 40 million times in the first month alone. Meanwhile, the broader campaign reached over 193 million people, receiving coverage from over 200 media outlets. What's more, post-campaign research revealed the work to be some of the strongest ever measured, in all major markets.

Woolmark Landing Page

New York & London

To amplify the release of the film, a striking 3D billboard at prime locations Times Square in New York, and Piccadilly Circus in London was created in collaboration with 20 Something. The screens were turned into swimming pools, bringing the alarming fact into the real world.

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The billboards were launched during New York Fashion Week, making a bold statement to the fasion industry.

In the Media

WeTransfer

A partnership with WeTransfer brought the reality of synthetic clothing's oil consumption to life for people transferring files on the popular file sharing platform. 20 Something created a wait screen while files upload, filling it with oil and revealing our data fact.

Campaign Visuals

Production

Woolmark approached us with a clear challenge: how do we educate the public on the enormous impact the synthetic clothing industry has on our planet? The answer came in the form of a data visualization concept - visualizing an Olympic sized pool filled with oil which is used for the production of synthetic clothing, every 25 minutes.

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We collaborated on the production with our London based partner Park Village and Silver Lining Films in South Africa.

Oil Filled Pool

The special effects team of Max Poolman at MXFX built a custom 6x6 meter pool that was filled with 36,000 liters of fake oil, created from a mixture of water, food thickener and edible children's paint. Lighting the pool was a significant challenge as the pool essentially acted as a mirror, reflecting everything visible in the studio. A white dome was created over the pool that was lit to match the nature plates that were previously shot on location.

Visual Effects

The project went through an elaborate pre-production phase where we created a full CG previsualization of the film together with Dead Pixel in Amsterdam, to understand many of the challenges before going into full scale production.

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Watch the video below for a detailed breakdown of the process:

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