How Sir David Attenborough Wrote the Greatest Ever Strategic Brief

Over the past month, we’ve all had the privilege to watch what’s being dubbed ‘the most important documentary’ of 2020. Sir David Attenborough’s witness statement ‘A Life on Our Planet’ is an inspirational – if scary at times – piece of comms that’s been making the rounds and touching everyone’s hearts. And rightly so, as it is presented in an empowering, unifying way, as only the best rallying cries can.

And isn’t that what agencies and strategists do – or should do! – with our briefing documents? Present a problem in a human, relatable way, with equal measures of emotions and cold-hard stats and data, to then deliver a creative proposition or platform from which everything else will stem from. The ultimate goal. The rallying cry. After that, everything else are tactics and executions that will bring that very same solution to the world.

Sir David Attenborough is a natural communicator. One of the best ever. He and his production team knew exactly what they were doing when they framed A Life on Our Planet as The Problem >> The Big Idea >> The road to get there.

And the way The Problem was presented was in the most impactful of ways: through his own experiences, 70 whole years of first-hand observations and no-bullshit facts. Insights that are deep, honest and, most importantly, tense. As they should all be. We hear from Sir David what has been happening across the planet for several decades now, as he himself witnessed it, coupled with information that’s presented to us, the viewer, in the most simple of infographics: the increase on number of human lives on Earth and its direct correlation to the disappearance of the wilderness in our planet. Logic. Undeniable. Strikingly moving.

And then BOOM!! We’re presented with the BIG IDEA. Five effortless words that require the biggest of efforts of all of Humankind:

It’s such a powerful statement. A goal that is as clear as is a mammoth one. Let’s break it down, from a copywriting point-of-view: We (collective, no different segmentations or target audiences) must (urgency/mandatory) re-wild (the idea of undoing the mess we’ve done is both inspiring and intriguing) the planet (our home). It’s a line that arrives midway through the documentary and sets the scene for the second half of its narrative. And this is where it gets interesting. 

Over the years, we got used to watch Sir David Attenborough’s documentaries on TV, either on a Sunday morning (as I used to do back in Portugal) or, lately, on video-on-demand. Most of the tims, we’d watch it as if we were contemplating the wild, side-by-side with the natural historian. Rarely, I’d say, did actively think about what needed to be done to go back to what we were once as a species and a civilisation.

But with ‘A Life on our Planet’ the thought process is taken to the next level. Clear actions and measures are presented in order to re-wild “this blue marble”. And like with every other fundamental change in society, these actions and measures are as structural as they are foundational for years, decades and centuries ahead. A chain of events presented, as if we were attending a pitch presentation, nicely put together on a keynote document, that started in a most unexpected – but, truth be told, extremely logical - of sectors: education. Most noticeably and quoting the broadcaster: “We must keep young girls in school”. Such a contrasting soundbite when, until that moment, all that was talked about was wildlife, the oceans and key moments throughout Sir David’s career.

But he explains in the most accurate, intricate and enlightening way: “In order to decrease or slow down the planet’s population, we should strive to have smaller families and households” and thus decrease the pressing need and consumption of natural resources and animal meat that leads, nowadays, to devastating consequences to our rainforests and sea life. And keeping young girls in school is the first step – of many – to allow them to pursue their dreams, careers and bring the world’s population growth to an halt, a break even point, if you will, that will signify the restart of the rewilding of the planet. Obviously, many other sectors, from food to pharmaceutical ones, will have to come into play for effective change in our livelihood at large, if we want to have a future as humankind. Eat better. Eat different. Find more efficient ways to travel. Be conscious with how you source your clothes. The car you buy. The paper you waste. Yes. It’s that serious. Yes, it’s that dramatic. But yes, it’s that possible.

So, my rallying cry to every creative, marketeer, comms professional, brand manager and CEO from every sector and industry out there is, the same way we’ve all put very important topics such as social equality and diversity in everyone’s mindsets and agendas over these past few years, we too should strive to now put climate change in front of us, as a collective effort. Not as a shoehorned purpose-washing (sigh!), but as leading creative teams, in the most important briefing of our lifetime: “We must re-wild the planet”.