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In partnership with the renowned conservation group, WildlifeDirect, Amarula debuted the 2018 “Don’t Let Them Disappear” campaign in Toronto with an arresting ice sculpture.
As the sun beat down on the cobblestone streets of the city’s iconic Distillery District over the weekend, a young child dragged his mother towards a towering ice sculpture in the middle of the street.
“Mommy, it’s an elephant!” the child squealed with glee. A small crowd gathered around the sculpture, including a news crew, and a few tourists with large cameras.
The unrelenting summer sun wasn’t doing the almost 10,000 kilograms of ice blocks any favours, and water dripped down the sides of the elephants and it’s ice tusks. To the right, a screen displayed a sobering fact.
“Every 15 minutes an African elephant is killed for its ivory.”
The life-sized ice sculpture of an African elephant was placed in the summer heat of Toronto on World Elephant Day by Amarula (the South African-based cream liqueur company’s brand icon is an elephant) and Wildlife Direct to illustrate the rapid loss of the African elephant population.
The Amarula Elephant remained on site at the Distillery District from at 9:00am until it has completely melted. A concurrent social media campaign run through the @AmarulaElephant helped raise $10,000 to fund Amarula Trust’s impactful conservation efforts, with the campaign ending on Wednesday.
The gradually melting sculpture symbolized the alarming rate at which African elephants are being killed for their ivory. The campaign aimed to raise awareness of efforts towards the preservation and protection of the world’s declining African elephant population.
WildlifeDirect is a non-profit organization that was founded in 2004 with an initial focus on the plight of gorillas and lions, redirecting its focus to elephant protection in 2012.
It’s flagship campaign, Hands Off Our Elephants, led by the current CEO of WildlifeDirect, Dr. Paula Kahumbu and the First Lady of Kenya, Margaret Kenyatta, created international awareness about the elephant poaching crisis in Africa.
“Within our lifetimes, we could lose elephants from the wild,” Kahumbu says in a release from the campaign. “We need to remember that elephants and humans have co-existed in Africa for our whole existence.”
Elephants exhibit characteristics that are very similar to humans, including caring for each other, being protective of their own kind and being sensitive to the other animals, she adds. “Humans should aspire to be more like elephants.”
Amarula partnered with Wildlife Direct to learn from the successes Kahumbu had in Kenya, where her organization is based. “Amarula is an African brand, and we as Africans have a responsibility of saving our elephant, and taking the message beyond Africa and across the world.”
