Save the Beyond

the challenge.

Not to manufacture a story, but to go out and find one

How can a global brand participate meaningfully in the environmental conversation without simply adding another sustainability message to the noise? For CITIZEN, the opportunity was to move beyond conventional product communication. PROMASTER had always been associated with demanding outdoor environments, but Save the Beyond could give that relationship greater purpose by supporting the people whose lives and work were already embedded within them.

The task was therefore not to manufacture a story around a watch. It was to find people whose work naturally belonged to the worlds PROMASTER was built to enter, and then allow the product to accompany them there.

the idea.

go beyond. witness. document. share.

imageMILL together with The History Channel, conceived Save the Beyond as an ongoing programme of branded journalism rather than a single campaign. Its structure grew from PROMASTER’s three territories: LAND, MARINE and SKY. For each chapter, we searched for an environmental leader whose real work aligned naturally with one of those worlds and with the launch of a specific watch. This approach made the relationship between person, place and product intrinsic to the story. Scientists, explorers and conservationists wore PROMASTER watches while carrying out their actual work, in environments where durability and reliability had practical meaning. The product was present without asking the subject to become its spokesperson; its relevance could be understood through observation.

imageMILL led the project from its initial concept and international research through contributor outreach, creative development and production. We planned shoots across some of the planet’s most distant and demanding locations, travelled with small teams to document the contributors in the field, and managed the complete post-production of the films. Working with CITIZEN’s website team, we then extended the films into interviews, photography and interactive editorial content. Each story could be explored in greater depth, allowing the science, places and people behind the campaign to remain central. The result positioned PROMASTER not simply as an outdoor watch, but as a practical companion to those studying and protecting the natural world.

The commitment was also material. We worked with CITIZEN to provide funding and support to the contributors’ NGOs and approved organisations. The campaign therefore did more than represent environmental work; it returned resources to the people and organisations carrying it out.

FILM SERIES

An ongoing documentary platform | Save the Beyond developed through a sequence of documentary chapters, each approaching environmental change through a different ecosystem, discipline or human perspective.

2019 · Save The Beyond – first film

2020 · Connecting 8 Oceans

2021 · Voice of the Deep

2022 · Symbol of the Seas

2023 · A World Without Glaciers

2024 · Frontiers of Hope – the final series, 3 films from the great frontiers of the Earth

SKY

SAVE THE BEYOND | SKY, EPISODE 3

Seeing the forest from the air

For Episode 3 of the first year, the story moved above the rainforest with Dr. Greg Asner, an airborne ecologist whose work has transformed the way biodiversity can be observed and protected. His Global Airborne Observatory (a converted Dornier 228 equipped with lasers, imaging spectrometers and onboard supercomputers) maps entire landscapes while retaining the detail needed to identify species, calculate the carbon held within forest canopies and trace the effects of drought and climate change.

The film followed Asner’s unusual convergence of field science, aviation and advanced imaging, revealing how information gathered thousands of feet above the ground can influence decisions made by governments and conservation organisations below it. The consequences of that work are tangible: mapping conducted by Asner’s team in the Peruvian Amazon contributed to the creation of Yaguas National Park. The SKY story formed a natural relationship with PROMASTER’s AIR collection. Asner was not placed into an invented adventure for the benefit of the product. He was filmed inside the aircraft, landscapes and scientific practice that defined his working life, wearing a watch designed for the same aerial environment.

Audiences responded to this combination of scale, urgency and human curiosity. With 2,340,015 views, SKY became one of CITIZEN’s most-viewed films to date, carrying a complex account of ecological research far beyond the scientific community.

FROM INFORMATION TO EXPERIENCE

Climate change is often communicated through numbers, projections and consequences that appear distant from everyday life. Documentary film allows something different. It places an audience beside a scientist on the ice, beneath the ocean’s surface or inside an aircraft passing over a rainforest canopy. Knowledge becomes situated in a person, a landscape and a particular moment.

For Save the Beyond, this was not simply a production method. It was the strategy. By allowing audiences to encounter environmental change through the work of people who understood it intimately, the films made complex issues more immediate without simplifying the science or exaggerating the threat.

beyond a campaign.

What began as a campaign became a long-running global editorial platform. It gave CITIZEN a way to use its international reach to amplify the work of scientists, explorers and conservationists while building a credible relationship between PROMASTER and the natural environments for which it was designed.

For imageMILL, Save the Beyond reflects what can happen when a brand begins with a meaningful question rather than a predetermined product message. The purpose was not created for the campaign. It was already present in the contributors’ work, the organisations CITIZEN supported and the places in which the stories unfolded. Our role was to find it, understand it and give it the space to be seen.

Don’t create purpose around the story. Find the story inside the purpose.