Finish - Birds Will Be Back

Havas Turkey

Agency: Reckitt Benckiser / Finish

As an activist brand, Finish has been focusing on creating a social consciousness about Turkey's seemingly unstoppable descent into becoming a water poor country.


After 2 years of talking about how our lakes and rivers are drying out because of waste by pre-rinsing or handwashing, we decided to turn our attention to a lake that had dried up in Turkey: Kuyucuk Lake.


With over 30,000 birds of 161 species, Kuyucuk is key habitat for globally endangered birds. However, due to the drought of the lake, the birds and their songs had disappeared. Finish decided to take matters into his own hands and restore joy to the villagers by bringing Kuyucuk back to life.


We gathered stories, old memories, and scientific information that allowed us to mine the sounds of 233 different species and created a 24-hour-audio track.


The project lasted 24 hours and took place along the whole village. Our main media channels were minarets of all village mosques, to spread the experience across the country we used TV scenario integrations, TV copy, TV band as well as digital platforms namely Instagram.


And we managed to save Kuyucuk Lake! Specialized drilling work was carried out by the provincial governorship in the area bringing in more than 900M liters that brought the lake back to life and more than 10,000 birds belonging to more than 100 species returned to Kuyucuk this summer.