&Co. / NoA: Sparking national action with a creative funeral campaign
Like most of the world, Denmark’s marine environment is facing a critical challenge. Fish and plants suffocate from oxygen depletion and mass death is taking place just below the surface. In response, a creative campaign used Vejle Fjord as a focal point to raise awareness, turning a long-overlooked environmental issue into a shared public concern. The campaign reached the equivalent of every Dane 25 times, driven by one strong idea and minimal paid media.
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A symbolic burial that made an invisible crisis seen
In 2023, Denmark registered the worst oxygen depletion in 20 years. For decades, marine biologists and Greenpeace activists have raised concern, but despite ongoing warnings, political action has largely stalled, arguably due to the complexity of the crisis.
Therefore, the creative agency &Co. / NoA helped Greenpeace and Danmarks Sportsfiskerforbund with a creative campaign, which was needed to overcome public apathy, gain national attention and turn complexity into a shared emotional concern. Based on the insight that no Dane lives more than 50 kilometres from the sea and most share a strong connection with it, the campaign focused on making the angle personal and relatable.
The concept was simple yet powerful: to host a funeral for the Dead Sea at Vejle Fjord, inviting the public, the press, and the politicians to grieve, reflect, and act. Only this time, the funeral wouldn’t be an end, it would be a symbolic act of hope aimed at bringing life back to the sea. Traditional rituals such as the death notice, the coffin, the obituary, and the sermon were turned into campaign elements that replaced numbers and data with love and opinions. This provided an opportunity for a national debate on oxygen depletion, agriculture, nature and even the Church’s role in protecting nature.
The problem is far from solved. But the campaign marked the beginning of a permanent dialogue about the pressured marine environment, with Vejle Fjord as a symbol of the crisis. Today, the issue can no longer be denied or delayed. As a direct result of the campaign, 39M DKK was allocated to urgently restore Vejle Fjord and 40B DKK for new regulations to restore Denmark’s seas.
"With the Funeral of Vejle Fjord, we turned the invisible crisis of oxygen depletion into a national wake-up call, proving that creativity and emotional storytelling can make even the most complex issues easy to understand and impossible to ignore. "
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About &Co. / NoA
Founded in Denmark in 2000, &Co. / NoA is a creative agency recognised for its strategic and internationally awarded work. The agency works across sectors to develop ideas that not only deliver measurable business results but also resonate with wider societal and cultural issues. With a strong emphasis on collaboration, &Co. / NoA brings together strategy, creativity, and execution to create campaigns that engage both local and global audiences.