Every summer, millions of viewers tune into Discovery Channel's iconic #SharkWeek, creating a massive cultural moment rooted in fascination and entertainment. For Oceana, the opportunity was the possibility of leveraging this massive, short-term seasonal audience spike to drive long-term, policy-driven action.
I led the development of a cross-channel engagement strategy and lifecycle marketing funnel that translated broad pop-culture interest into deep political advocacy, using the momentum of #SharkWeek to mobilize supporters behind critical federal legislation.
My Role: Integrated campaign strategy & copywriting, lifecycle journey architecture (Engaging Networks), cross-channel content design (email, SMS, video), and advocacy messaging strategy.
The Challenge
How do you capture short-term pop-culture excitement and prevent the inevitable post-event audience attrition typical of seasonal campaigns?
High-profile media moments offer a flood of digital attention, but that audience curiosity is usually passive and short-lived. In this case, the underlying issue, the global shark fin trade, involved complex policy loopholes that were difficult to explain in a standard 60-second window. While shark finning was illegal in U.S. waters, imports from countries with weak environmental protections were still perfectly legal.
To build a sustainable advocacy movement, we had to solve two major friction points: we needed to reframe sharks from feared predators to an essential species worth protecting, and we had to build an automated lifecycle engine that prevented post-campaign attrition by keeping newly acquired users engaged over the next six months.
The Approach
I structured a multi-stage acquisition and retention journey designed to turn immediate, entertainment-fueled excitement into lasting civic action.
- The Cultural Bridge: Through Oceana's official partnership with Discovery Channel, I developed high-impact, cross-channel creative assets. By incorporating celebrity voices like Nina Dobrev alongside striking shark media, we created a welcoming, low-barrier entry point that matched the tone of #SharkWeek.
- Translating Policy into Action: I authored targeted email campaigns that systematically distilled complex legislative text into urgent, message-driven calls-to-action. We reframed the issue by pairing emotional, high-stakes facts with a unifying, action-oriented digital movement: the #FinBanNow campaign. This directly empowered supporters to pressure their U.S. Senators to pass the stalled Shark Fin Sales Elimination Act.
- The Six-Month Retention Engine: Rather than allowing newly acquired supporters to drop off after Shark Week ended, I architected a custom, six-month automated nurture journey within Engaging Networks. This lifecycle strategy incrementally guided new advocates from purely shark-themed content into Oceana's broader, high-priority marine conservation initiatives such as plastic pollution legislation, sustainable fisheries management, and protecting whales from commercial ship strikes.
The Results
By treating a high-visibility media event as a long-term acquisition engine rather than a single-week moment, the campaign successfully altered Oceana's audience retention metrics. Over three consecutive years, the strategy captured thousands of new high-intent supporters annually and sustained deep engagement across multiple conservation verticals well into the off-season.
This massive, multi-year mobilization effort, spearheaded by Oceana and its dedicated coalition partners, directly contributed to public awareness and national legislative pressure. In late 2022, the United States officially passed the Shark Fin Sales Elimination Act into federal law, successfully closing the loophole and banning the trade of shark fins nationwide.
"Remember, while you’re tuning in to Discovery this week, there is no Shark Week without sharks. We need a #FinBanNow."
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