Blue carbon could be one of nature’s greatest weapons in climate change, and we were challenged in helping spread awareness of its importance, via Zurich’s recent partnership with the Marine Conservation Society. Putting our thinking caps on, we knew the best way to educating the new generations (and their parents at the same time) was through the art of story-telling.

With that we came up with the idea to create a children’s book: “The Secret Garden Under the Sea: Seanna the Seahorse and friends”, which was dedicated to the subject and aimed at educating families on the importance of seagrass through Seanna and her sealife friends.

We backed our launch with a few punchy stats to identify the problem; 69% of UK parents had never heard of blue carbon and that 92% of seagrass has vanished over the last 100 years. To bring media and broadcast appeal, we enlisted children’s TV presenter and climate change champion, Ade Adepitan, to co-author the book, and Erin Mackay, a recognised illustrator, who brought out book and story narrative to life visually – which proved successful after landing interview pieces on ITV London & national titles!

Building gravitas, we worked with a number of stakeholders to support, including local MPs and schools, whereby we filmed the first ever book reading in a London school to show the appetite for learning on the subject, The book itself was available in e-book and audiobook form on Spotify, as well as 400 physical copies for local schools.