How Jack Black And A Talking T-Rex Teamed Up With The United Nations For The #DontChooseExtinction Campaign

Jack Black recording the voiceover for the computer animated dinosaur featuring in a new short film for UN Development Programme’s Don’t Choose Extinction campaign | UNDP

In a UN first, a ferocious and talkative dinosaur bursts into the iconic General Assembly Hall at UN Headquarters in New York, with a special warning for any diplomats who still think climate action is for the birds.  

“At least we had an asteroid,” the carnivorous critter warns, referring to the popular theory explaining dinosaurs’ extinction 70 million years ago. “What’s your excuse?” 

This isn’t a slice of real life, of course, rather the key computer-generated scene from a new short film launched by the UN Development Programme (UNDP), as the centerpiece of the agency’s ‘Don’t Choose Extinction’ campaign. 

I caught up with the creative team behind it - Boaz Paldi from the UN, Jon Carlaw from Activista, the creative company behind the idea, and Helen Trickey who produced the whole project- to find out more about their journey from brief to execution.

Afdhel Aziz: Boaz, let’s start with you. How did the idea for this project come about and what was the brief you approached Activista with?

Boaz Paldi: There is one issue that stands out in the climate emergency that needs to be tackled first and urgently – Fossil Fuel Subsidies. 

$423 billion was spent on outdated and unnecessary government subsidies last year alone. These subsidies skew the economy towards fossil fuels and away from renewable energy. This needs to stop now. But at the same we need to make sure that no one is left behind. That the poorest and most disenfranchised do not bear the highest burden of the price of increased fossil fuels if and when government subsidies are removed. 

These are complicated issues that most people don’t know about, let alone understand the bigger implications. So the brief was to create a campaign that sparks a global conversation about the climate emergency with a focus on Fossil Fuel Subsidies; making the message accessible to everyone across the globe. Simple.

Aziz: Jon, tell us how you received the challenge, and what lead you to the concept of ‘Don’t Choose Extinction’?

Jon Carlaw: From the start, we were humbled by the scope and scale of the challenge. Scope in that the issue of a changing climate and the factors that limit our collective commitment to address it are quite complex. 

And scale in that the message needs to resonate with quite literally the entire planet, in endless languages, cultures and economic situations. 

In speaking with UNDP's experts on climate science, geo-politics and economics what inspired us was the simplicity of the solution being proposed. Ending Fossil Fuel subsidies is the first domino, so to speak, that needs to fall to make all of the other solutions more viable. Coupled with this unique moment we're living through, when nearly every country is using subsidies to jump start their economies during a global pandemic, it felt very much (to borrow from the Matrix) like a "red pill blue pill" kind of moment. 

Of course, not everyone on the planet knows this reference. But one we do all know, is the dinosaur. The last apex species to go extinct. Looking at our species' situation from that perspective, and the choices we're making despite what the science says made it all clear. We had an asteroid. What's your excuse?" , is a direct line from the speech, but also the strategy, to ask us all an existential  question at this moment. Do we continue to do what we're doing in the face of what the science says? Or make the choice to change now while we still have the time?

Aziz: Helen, let’s turn to you. This must have been a giant creative challenge to help bring to life. How did you tackle this task, and how did you get Jack Black involved?

Helen Trickey: While our audience was the whole world, our main goal was to target the silent majority - the 85% who are broadly aware of Climate Change but doing little about it. We needed to get our message into these peoples’ everyday lives, but it’s not easy to get “Fossil Fuel Subsidies” into popular culture. That said, once Frankie the Dinosaur was suggested by Activista as the way to get people talking about the subject, we knew we were on to something. 

We sought out the best in the world to help us execute - David Litt (speechwriter for Obama) wrote the witty words and pithy soundbites delivered by Frankie, treading a complex line between playfully amusing, goddam serious and incredibly urgent. This is a hard thing to achieve! 

Framestore - the folk behind BBC Emmy Award-winning docuseries, “Walking with Dinosaurs” were the genius team who actually made Frankie a real walking and talking CGI creature. 

Rachel Portman was our composer - she was the first female composer to win an Academy Award and is second to none. 

As the film was translated in 38 languages, we worked with talent from all over the world. Jack Black was the inspiration for the speech, and went on to deliver the VO in the most marvelous way - Frankie was also voiced by Eiza Gonzales in Spanish, Aïssa Maïga in French and Game of Thrones Actor Nikolaj Coster-Waldau in Danish, to name just a few.

Now the campaign is live, once we pull audiences in via the film they’re directed to a world class action-based digital ecosystem created by Wunderman Thompson Australia and Mindpool.

I think all those mentioned above, and anyone else who touched the campaign, knew they were on to a good thing when they learned of our intentions for Frankie and the brief behind his existence - the United Nations Development Programme were essentially offering all these folks a once in a life time opportunity to make a difference to Climate Change at scale. The hardest part was without doubt getting everyone working together to make the magic happen. And the paperwork required to shoot in the UN General Assembly.

Aziz: Amazing thanks for sharing! Boaz, what have been the results so far? How has the campaign been received?

Aïssa Maïga recording the voiceover for the computer animated dinosaur featuring in a new short film for UN Development Programme’s Don’t Choose Extinction campaign to raise awareness about climate change. Photo: Simon Guillemin | SIMON GUILLEMIN

Paldi: The results so far have been outstanding. We have millions and millions of views for the film across 38 languages and a high conversion rate to the campaign website and Collective Intelligence site Global Mindpool. 

We are seeing an organic spread of the campaign across the world. From Bangladesh, to Kenya, to Iceland, to Brazil, to the Philippines we see that Frankie the Dinosaur has become part of the pop culture. We set out to spark a global conversation and that is exactly we have done.

But much more than all of this, we have had an impact on the COP26 negotiations in Glasgow. We see now that Fossil Fuel Subsidies are on the agenda which they were not before the campaign launched.  Of course we didn’t do this alone. Activists around the globe have been working hard on this result, but we certainly had a significant impact and brought the issue to the attention of millions of people. 

This is what we set out to do.  And this is just the beginning of the journey.

Aziz: Jon and Helen, what advice do you have for other creative teams who want to get involved in helping fight climate change?

Trickey: I think the answer to the campaign’s success ultimately lies in the combination of:

1. An extraordinary client (you don’t get bigger or more powerful than the United Nations);

2. An extraordinary brief (a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to affect climate change at scale); 

3. An extraordinary idea (a dinosaur giving a witty speech at the UN, plus a smart and creative digital ecosystem to help people take meaningful action); 

4. An extraordinary team to pull all this off (hundreds of world class thinkers and doers working in unison across almost every time zone that exists).

Carlaw: First, start selling solutions. We're well past selling people on whether there's a problem or not. We need more people embracing what has to be done. 

Secondly, make the issue bite-size, more palatable. We started this project with a lot of complexity but what unlocked the idea was distilling it down to that one thing. And then figuring out how to make that one thing easy enough for anyone to understand which became “Don’t Choose Extinction.”

Thirdly, don’t go it alone, team up. Find friends. Find strange bedfellows. There are no winners and losers in this fight. It's all for one. This project relied on an incredible amount of collaboration across multiple agencies, industries and creators all bringing their talent to a common cause, often at very odd hours. 

And finally - don't wait for the brief to come to you. It's here, for all of us right now.