Salty the Sea Otter

While Ucluelet loves welcoming people to its wild location, it’s experienced a massive influx of tourists in the summer months in recent years. The town needed a campaign aimed at helping visitors understand the natural balance and how to be responsible while still having fun.

The challenge was to create a fun and engaging campaign that communicated the town’s ethos and educated audiences about more sustainable behaviours—without being seen as preachy or stiff. From this, Salty the Sea Otter was born: a Ucluetian who gives visitors helpful tips about how to visit in a playful but no-nonsense way.

We wanted Salty to be able to interact within the actual environment and with real people, so we needed a way to bring him to life that would let us adapt to unpredictable situations. We hired a professional puppet maker to help us create him, and after a few variations, we landed on just the right look. Next, we cast a professional comedian as Salty’s voice. We needed someone who could make the jokes land. And because Salty would occasionally interact with actual travellers, we wanted someone with ad-lib solid skills. Armed with our puppet and comedic talent, we created videos and online ads that have Salty offering travellers tips on how to fit in with the locals by properly disposing of trash, camping in designated areas, staying on hiking paths, not feeding wildlife, and more.