2025 Winner
BronzeBest Disruption
World Wildlife Fund
"Save Big"
Initiative
"Save Big"
Initiative
The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) is on a mission to reverse wildlife loss and fight climate change by restoring and protecting 100 million hectares of habitat and carbon-rich ecosystems. In 2024, they were seeking a new way to spark action and get Canadians to engage or donate across their website.
Over the past decade, advertisers have aggressively pursued purpose-driven marketing, resulting in widespread desensitization. When every campaign claims to make a difference, how can a brand that’s actually saving the world — like WWF — stand out?
While cause-marketing often struggles to break through, there’s one category that consistently captures consumer attention: retail. Retailers have mastered the art of urgency — leveraging savings, FOMO, and countless other cues to drive immediate action.
“Save Big” is an urgent conservation effort that looks and behaves like an urgent retail campaign. The agency borrowed retail’s tools — its tone, media choices, and behavioural hooks — and used them to sell something far more important: saving the planet. The campaign placed WWF’s environmental message in retail-like environments where action is already instinctive — reframing the way Canadians think about conservation.
They mirrored retail’s media playbook, planning a full-funnel strategy that delivered urgency, context, and frictionless action at every level. The agency’s placements hijacked spaces traditionally reserved for commerce: NFC-enabled wildpostings in retail plazas, Amazon category-targeted creatives, WWF ads integrated into Flipp retail flyers, and soy-based stickers placed where environmental destruction is most visible.
They targeted retail plazas and sites of recent real estate development with digital out-of-home, including wildpostings with NFC-enabled “tappable” stickers to provide an easy, frictionless way for users to tap their device and visit the WWF website to donate.
Across Amazon, the agency strategically mapped hundreds of product categories to specific creative variants to deliver them with relevance precisely when shoppers were engaged and primed to spend. For example, creative highlighting grizzly bears targeted Amazon searches for hiking gear and bear spray, while their forest fire message was matched to fire alarms and extinguishers.
They promoted micro-donations across platforms traditionally reserved for retail brands, such as Flipp. Despite falling outside typical category whitelists, they secured special approval to integrate their ads seamlessly into retail flyers to reach shoppers in the ideal mindset.
They mobilized their entire agency to help place hundreds of soy-based, environmentally friendly stickers across the province, promoting the campaign in high-impact locations — gas pumps, garbage cans, and development signs — where environmental destruction is most visible.
The core innovation lay in reframing the entire cause marketing approach through the lens of retail urgency. This was the first WWF campaign to mimic a retail model — both in message and media placement.
The tap-to-checkout wildpostings marked the organization’s first use of interactive NFC in an out-of-home format — allowing donations via physical media, without needing to type a URL or scan a QR code.
WWF became one of the first non-profits to integrate directly into Flipp, a platform previously limited to CPGs and big-box retailers. By behaving like a retail brand, they gained access to entirely new media territory for a conservation message.
Using soy-based, eco-friendly adhesive stickers as a media channel — placed manually across a region — added a tactile, visual layer of innovation while staying aligned with WWF’s environmental values.
Over the past decade, advertisers have aggressively pursued purpose-driven marketing, resulting in widespread desensitization. When every campaign claims to make a difference, how can a brand that’s actually saving the world — like WWF — stand out?
While cause-marketing often struggles to break through, there’s one category that consistently captures consumer attention: retail. Retailers have mastered the art of urgency — leveraging savings, FOMO, and countless other cues to drive immediate action.
“Save Big” is an urgent conservation effort that looks and behaves like an urgent retail campaign. The agency borrowed retail’s tools — its tone, media choices, and behavioural hooks — and used them to sell something far more important: saving the planet. The campaign placed WWF’s environmental message in retail-like environments where action is already instinctive — reframing the way Canadians think about conservation.
They mirrored retail’s media playbook, planning a full-funnel strategy that delivered urgency, context, and frictionless action at every level. The agency’s placements hijacked spaces traditionally reserved for commerce: NFC-enabled wildpostings in retail plazas, Amazon category-targeted creatives, WWF ads integrated into Flipp retail flyers, and soy-based stickers placed where environmental destruction is most visible.
They targeted retail plazas and sites of recent real estate development with digital out-of-home, including wildpostings with NFC-enabled “tappable” stickers to provide an easy, frictionless way for users to tap their device and visit the WWF website to donate.
Across Amazon, the agency strategically mapped hundreds of product categories to specific creative variants to deliver them with relevance precisely when shoppers were engaged and primed to spend. For example, creative highlighting grizzly bears targeted Amazon searches for hiking gear and bear spray, while their forest fire message was matched to fire alarms and extinguishers.
They promoted micro-donations across platforms traditionally reserved for retail brands, such as Flipp. Despite falling outside typical category whitelists, they secured special approval to integrate their ads seamlessly into retail flyers to reach shoppers in the ideal mindset.
They mobilized their entire agency to help place hundreds of soy-based, environmentally friendly stickers across the province, promoting the campaign in high-impact locations — gas pumps, garbage cans, and development signs — where environmental destruction is most visible.
The core innovation lay in reframing the entire cause marketing approach through the lens of retail urgency. This was the first WWF campaign to mimic a retail model — both in message and media placement.
The tap-to-checkout wildpostings marked the organization’s first use of interactive NFC in an out-of-home format — allowing donations via physical media, without needing to type a URL or scan a QR code.
WWF became one of the first non-profits to integrate directly into Flipp, a platform previously limited to CPGs and big-box retailers. By behaving like a retail brand, they gained access to entirely new media territory for a conservation message.
Using soy-based, eco-friendly adhesive stickers as a media channel — placed manually across a region — added a tactile, visual layer of innovation while staying aligned with WWF’s environmental values.
Credits
WWF CanadaMonarch Vyas - Manager, Digital Communications Platforms
Courtney Harrison - Senior Manager, Brand & Marketing
Mark Cavalcante - Senior Specialist, Digital Marketing Campaigns
Emily Vandermeer - Senior Specialist, Communications
Nicole MacAdam - Vice President, Communications
Mark Charles - Vice President, Marketing
Initiative Canada
Lucus Dato - Supervisor, Communications Design
Stephanie Chan - Senior Analyst, Media Finance Operations
Stefan Ruby - Manager, Creative Partnerships
Taylor Schmidt - Director, Creative Partnerships
Christian Kern - Group Account Director, Strategy
Mike Cortiula - VP, Client Advice & Management
Chris Gairdner - VP, Head of Creative Partnerships
Nikki Ernst - Senior Graphic & Presentation Designer
Chloe Hurst - Director, Visual Communications
Sammy Rifai - Chief Strategy Officer
Helen Galanis - Chief Executive Officer
Kinesso Canada
Victoria Yu - Associate Director, Programmatic
Nina Zamtaradze - Associate Director, Programmatic
Ashley McCarnan - Senior Director, Performance Marketing
McCann Canada (MRM)
Nikhil Bijlani - Project Manager
Sean Perkins - Director, Digital Customer Experience
Kevin Dias - Associate Director, Performance Analytics
Brad Hodgkinson - Senior Designer
Elijah Di Gangi - Associate Creative Director
Paula Purdon - Creative Director
Sogol Ravaei - Group Account Director
Ian Mackenzie - Creative Chief Officer & Global Creative AI Lead