Using Heartwired Insights to Inspire New Ocean Voices

Challenge

The Mariana Trench is Earth’s deepest point and home to some of the world’s most unique marine life. After successfully petitioning the U.S. government to establish the Mariana Trench Marine National Monument, Friends of the Mariana Trench (FOMT) has worked to sustain a culture of conservation in the Northern Mariana Islands through advocacy, education, and community engagement. While awareness about the threats of overfishing, water pollution, and litter has increased over the past few years, misinformation and oppositional narratives from commercial interests pose a risk of impeding, and potentially reversing, FOMT’s hard-won progress.

FOMT partnered with Wonder to uncover the barriers and opportunities in promoting a conservation mindset among youth, elders, and school leaders, and adapt messaging strategies to meet the needs of an evolving political and narrative landscape. 

FOMT also engaged local university students who identified as Chamorro and Carolinian to take part in the project, recognizing the importance of affinity-matching in qualitative audience research. With Wonder’s training and guidance, the FOMT team and students successfully recruited and conducted 19 in-depth interviews with youth, school leaders, and elders, resulting in rich and honest conversations that generated valuable insights into how people are feeling about ocean protection.  

Heartwired Insights

Our research analysis revealed strong emotional connections to the ocean among our target audiences. These connections were rooted in core memories, family, work, recreation, culture, and spirituality. We also learned that while there was already strong agreement that we need to protect the ocean and shared belief that everyone plays a role in it, there was a lack of understanding about what to do. Many audiences were left feeling hopeless, leading to feelings of frustration and inaction. 

Based on these findings, Wonder recommended:    

• Shifting from a persuasion strategy to an activation strategy: While audiences agreed that the ocean needs protecting, there was a lack of understanding about what to do beyond increasing awareness and picking up trash around beaches. Wonder recommended FOMT messaging and communications focus on activating audiences rather than persuading them, highlighting what they can do and specific actions, rather than why they should do it.

• Inspiring hope and action: Wonder also recommended hope as a key objective to counter feelings of hopelessness and drive action. To effectively inspire hope, we recommended emphasizing shared values, featuring local and relatable messengers to model behavior, using plain spoken language, highlighting progress and wins, and having clear calls to action. 

Results

Wonder completed our engagement with FOMT by leading a workshop on public speaking and storytelling, with the goal of training local community leaders to be vocal ocean ambassadors in their communities. Initially, many participants expressed uncertainty in their ability to be effective messengers. After learning speaking techniques, hearing from others, and individual practice, many participants opened up and shared powerful stories related to ocean healing, spirituality, and tradition. Participants walked away with the confidence and understanding that their personal and authentic narratives, combined with specific calls to action, held the potential to drive meaningful change within their communities. 

In the words of one of the local community leaders:

“There is a part of me that self doubts and says what do you have to contribute. Well, I have a lot to contribute. And I’m here pledging to raise my kids to be aware and to love their resources, and to give back to the ocean. But not just the ocean, our whole entire resources, the land, everything. That’s my commitment, and I will take with me what I’ve learned here, that even though my story might not be as compelling as someone else’s, I still have something to share.”

In the words of Laurie Peterka, Executive Director of FOMT: 

“The feedback is amazing… I am so moved by people’s experiences and responses to the work that we get to do with you.”