Spitfire began working with the Pacific Islands Heritage Coalition in April 2024 to help expand protections of the Pacific Islands Heritage Marine National Monument (formerly the Pacific Remote Islands), one of the last wild and healthy ecosystems in the world. Working with the Coalition, we focused on amplifying Indigenous leaders and community members’ calls to protect the ecosystem, wildlife and heritage from harmful fishing and over extraction.
The Pacific Islands Heritage Coalition had a singular goal: persuade the Biden Administration to continue the trajectory of preceding presidents and expand irreversible protections for the Pacific Islands Heritage Marine National Monument.
To that end, Spitfire developed a comprehensive l approach that combined earned and social media efforts, Pacific Island thought leadership, paid media and other digital strategies. The social media strategy highlighted Indigenous and territory communities’ shared values and vision, articulating the awe and wonder, deep cultural connection and critical ecological need of the region. We strategically leveraged owned and earned media across national and Pacific territory outlets, including op-ed placements, press releases, LinkedIn articles, columns, owned blogs and partner organization newsletters.
Throughout our work together, we identified and acted on both proactive and reactive opportunities such as New York Climate Week, The Festival of Pacific Arts & Culture, the U.S. presidential election, and the International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples to uplift stories on the Coalition’s social channels as well as in territory and Hawai’i-based outlets.
As a result of our social media engagement, the Coalition’s content reached 376% more people on Instagram and 450% more people on Facebook than during the six months before our partnership. We collaborated with the Coalition on a successful national advertising campaign with geofenced display ads on The Washington Post to reach decision makers in Washington, D.C. The campaign delivered more than 1.2 million impressions, 4,200 clicks and almost 150,000 completed video views. We also worked with Patagonia and Rising Tide Interactive on a video and online ad, respectively, to uplift Indigenous voices as well as support from former secretary of state John Kerry shared during New York Climate Week. The ad we developed with Rising Tide went on to win the Reed Award for Best Online Video for Public Affairs Campaign or Issue Advocacy-Social Policy and helped reach and influence key D.C. decision makers ahead of the Coalition’s day of action on multiple platforms and channels. The work to protect the region shifted in a new political climate in 2025. Through earned media, storytelling and strategic communications support, we continued to support the Pacific Islands Heritage Coalition in defending against ocean protection rollbacks, fighting military development plans on Kalama (Johnston Atoll), monitoring emerging threats of deep sea mining and building stronger connections of support across Oceania.