Marketing In The News: The WWF Approach to Spreading Their Message

Looking through the web I saw many potential ads to examine since marketing agencies have been getting more and more clever in the ways they deliver their messages. This ad by WWF caught my attention due to its covert nature, I commend them for the way they targeted an audience and grabbed their attention without initially disclosing the fact that it was an ad.

            This ad by WWF depicted many serene images on 9 of the top travel-oriented Instagram accounts, followed by the hashtag #TooLatergram. A commonality between many of these Instagram pages is the “don’t you wish you were here?” vibe. The interesting thing about these images is that they were photoshopped to take out the terrible environmental effects that humans have had on them. These pristine locales no longer exist and are impossible to visit in their depicted form due to the terrible impact the industrial world has had on them.

The company that leads this ad campaign (The WFF) is a leader in environmental protection and their goal is to raise awareness about the environment, and their value proposition is to mainstream sustainability. This marketing campaign was unique due to how they utilized the social media platform, the hid their message in a place where people looked, where people wanted to see images of luscious environments, and when they grabbed the attention of their audience they dropped their message like a bomb. These places were destroyed by pollution, construction, and climate change and the only way to return to these locations in their original form is through pictures and photoshopped images of the ravaged landscape.

               This ad campaign was extremely effective in capturing their audiences’ attention and delivering an important message, but I believe it could have been more effective. If I was the marketing manager at WWF I would have seeded Instagram with photoshopped images for months, letting everyone enjoy the photoshopped landscapes that no longer exist. Then I would execute the plan, by adding a secondary picture to all the photos we released, that showed the true state of the locations, (polluted, mined, deforested, uninhabitable). People on Instagram would then have a connection to all these environments that were impacted by modernity and then have an incentive to question the way they go about their days and what impact they are having on their local and global environment.

               This ad campaign reinforced a lot of the material we learned in Seth Godin’s purple cow, it was unique, punctual, interesting, and caught people off guard. From this ad campaign I learned how strategic and unobtrusive you can be in spreading your message, this is the guerilla warfare of marketing.

AD CAMPAIGN: http://creativity-online.com/work/wwf-toolatergram/54256