Oceana Canada, the non-profit focused on ocean restoration and preservation, has launched a new campaign it hopes will make waves with Canadians who want to to take meaningful action on environmental issues.

The effort, “A Drop in the Ocean,” landed last Thursday on World Oceans Day. It takes the time to step back and celebrate the achievements that the advocacy group has realized in recent years, while simultaneously acting as a call to action for concerned Canadians to step up and participate in its actions. It’s a rare, holistic look at what the organization has done and continues to do, according to Scott Fess, creative director at Elemental, which developed the campaign with the non-profit.

“We do a lot of campaigns for Oceana, and a lot of them have to do with rallying peoples’ support and getting them involved in various specific initiatives that have to do with issues like plastic pollution or over-fishing,” he tells strategy. “This is the first we’ve done in a while that is a meaningful, whole-brand story and speaks to all of the issues Oceana is active on, bringing them together as one unified concept and overarching story of what it is all about.”

In recent years, Oceana has played a vocal role in the fight against single-use plastics, which led to federal bans on several harmful ones last year. The non-profit also led a fight for amendments to the Fisheries Act to enable Canada to rebuild its depleted fish populations. These are just two of the wins the organization has achieved, all thanks to what it calls its “wavemakers” – concerned Canadians who work with the organization to take action on these issues.

“People sometimes think they’re powerless to help a given situation, so with this campaign, we wanted to shift that perception and we used the metaphor of drops of water coming together to create change,” Fess explains. “This was all about illustrating the power and potential of those ‘Wavemakers,’ and showing how when everyone comes together, we can make a real difference.”

The campaign, like much of Elemental’s work for Oceana Canada, is running digitally, primarily across social. This is because approaching Canadians in those environments more often translates to actual action, Fess says, as well as word-of-mouth promotion of the cause as people get active on the issues.

“When you can show people how their efforts do make a real difference and lead to change, it gives them the encouragement they need to also get involved,” Fess says.