The Ocean Cleanup | Deloitte Impact Foundation

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Launching the Interceptor

In this blog (1/5), Steffen Wijdemans and Niels Stol talk about their project for The Ocean Cleanup’s Interceptor campaign. They created an event management solution including the digital marketing journey and QR ticket scanning and even joined the launch event as volunteers.

The Ocean Cleanup designs and develops advanced technologies to rid the world’s oceans and rivers of plastic. Since 2017, Deloitte is supporting The Ocean Cleanup, across functions, to further professionalize their organization and operations. So far, around 20 projects have been executed by 131 Deloitte colleagues. Via this blog series, multiple colleagues share their experiences.

Steffen Wijdemans and Niels Stol are part of the Customer & Marketing team at Deloitte. This means that they help clients with all aspects of customer interaction. Niels came in touch with The Ocean Cleanup in 2017 and has been  supporting them with their Customer Relationship Management (CRM) ever since. When The Ocean Cleanup was planning to launch their secret and exclusive Interceptor, he reached out to Steffen to help design the digital event journey.

Closing the tap

On October 26th, 2019, Boyan Slat unveiled The Ocean Cleanup’s Interceptor in a worldwide press covered event in a remote warehouse located in the Rotterdam harbor – view the video. Steffen: ‘The Interceptor is The Ocean Cleanup’s answer for river plastic waste. It is the first scalable solution to prevent plastic from entering the oceans from rivers. It is 100% solar-powered, extracts plastic autonomously, and is capable of operating in the majority of the world’s most polluting rivers. The Interceptor should stop a large amount of plastic ending up in the ocean, thereby closing the tap.’

Undercover operations

The Ocean Cleanup started its river program in 2016, and worked below the radar until the unveiling of the Interceptor. It was developed in absolute secrecy and all field operations were done undercover, including the deployment of two systems in public view in Indonesia and Malaysia that were kept incognito until the launch.

Digital event journey

Niels: ‘We have supported The Ocean Cleanup with a number of CRM related projects, the digital marketing campaign of this special launch event being one of the highlights. In close collaboration with the amazing crew at The Ocean Cleanup, an extensive personalized campaign was launched in the weeks leading up to the event. Supporters and press were invited in order of priority and communication occurred as personalized as could be based on available CRM data.’

Generating event tickets

Steffen: ‘We created the system for generating individual QR attendance tickets of the event. Strict rules applied for tracking attendance due to the choice of location in a special trade and regulated zone in the port of Rotterdam. Therefore, it was required not only to check-in all attendees during the event, but also to check-out when leaving the location by scanning the QR codes.’ 

From ship dock to event location

Niels adds: ‘In addition, we volunteered during the event to support the operation of the ticketing system and were quickly upgraded to Event Registration Officers. The scale, anticipation and public interest for this event made it unlike any other project work the team has previously experienced. It was really impressive to see how The Ocean Cleanup managed to turn this massive ship dock into an industrial event location suitable to give a live demo of The Interceptor. Not quite your regular day at the office!’

Interceptor Unveiling

Watch the highlights of the event.

The Deloitte Impact Foundation

Through the Deloitte Impact Foundation, Deloitte is committed to bring a positive impact to society. We share our core competences, knowledge and network in societal initiatives to make an impact in the fields of education & employment, sustainability and endurability. Read more about the Deloitte Impact Foundation and view our other initiatives.

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