The Dogwood Initiative visualizes an oil spill

The Dogwood Initiative is a leading land-reform organization in B.C. whose goal is to make the province the global model for sustainable land reform.

Its most recent initiative, "No Tankers," aims to stop oil tanker traffic from endangering B.C.'s fragile coastal waters. Every tanker off the B.C. coast or in the Vancouver harbour has the potential to spill 120,000 tons of oil in those waters. Even so, it's hard for many people to really comprehend the impact if a spill were to happen.

Rethink's goal was a very time sensitive one: it wanted to drive public engagement during last November's civic elections.

To make it possible to visualize an oil spill, Rethink embedded Oculus Rift virtual reality technology in an old-school sightseeing viewer and installed it in Vancouver harbour three days before the election.

People stepped up to the viewer and saw a very different sight than they expected. Instead of the beautiful scene before their eyes they witnessed a virtual reality oil spill — scenery with dying sea life, bitumen-soaked sand, flaming pools of oil and crippled tankers leaking crude oil. What people saw shocked them, and created the emotional response the organization was after.

The second part of the plan was media outreach, along with social media. Before Rethink went live with the stunt, it invited media and the political candidates to drop by. During the installation, citizens and politicians alike filled their social media feed with selfies and commentary. After the election, it released a video of the entire experience that created a second wave of awareness.

The effort generated over 1.5 million earned media impressions and over 50,000 video views on Facebook. All major social media news sites ran the story in the days immediately before the election — exactly the time the organization wanted the story to be at its peak.