Hi Anthem Awards judges, this is the case for IFAW

The International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) rescues and protects endangered animals, populations and habitats around the world with a variety of projects. To optimise its international digital campaigning, the non-profit organisation has entered into a partnership with DEPT®.

From July 19 till August 5 we ran the IFAW brand campaign #BackToTheWild. The context of the campaign was perfectly timed around Freedom Day, when Prime Minister Boris Johnson ended a year of Covid-19 lockdown measures in the UK. The announcement of Freedom Day was the perfect moment for IFAW to set up an engaging brand campaign. Freedom Day is a once in a lifetime moment where we as humans experience how it feels for animals to be released back to their natural habitat. A campaign to engage the current generation to protect endangered species, to protect what we share with them and to protect our planet’s health.

Objective

The main goal for this campaign was to raise brand awareness for IFAW. To help IFAW to determine the brand building KPIs, we’ve run a Facebook Brand Health Check. Based on these insights we’ve set the brand KPIs for this campaign: focus on generating aided brand awareness, the most basic brand KPI and a good starting point for IFAW.

• Primary brand KPI: 
  • Aided brand awareness – lift of +3.2 percentage points

• Secondary brand KPIs: 
  • Ad recall – lift of +6.6  percentage points
  • Familiarity – lift of +0.6  percentage points

The secondary goal of the campaign was to show the impact of brand campaigns on generating donations. The campaign was a case study to convince the internal board why and how to focus on growing the brand with a full funnel strategy. 

Strategy & Target audience

To help IFAW with brand impact and a healthy donation flow, a full funnel strategy is needed. The success formula for this brand flight consists of the right channel strategy, cross-channel alignment, target audience strategy, follow-up and brand measurement solutions.

The target audience was broad. Because the campaign was set up around Freedom Day, the campaign was perfect to reach a much broader audience than its existing supporters (female, aged 45+); and therefore the perfect moment for new audiences to hear from IFAW, a brand that was mainly focused on building its brand amongst existing supporters and usual suspects.

Insights & Iterations

The brand campaign #BackToTheWild is a big success! The campaign has definitely contributed to generating brand awareness for IFAW, the target audiences became more aware of IFAW after seeing the campaign.

Next to these results, we’re currently working with IFAW on a long term strategy, so this brand campaign is a nice foundation for a full funnel campaign, with more focus on brand. 

Insights Brand Lift Studies:

• Facebook/Instagram: Uplift of +4.9 percentage points for (aided) brand awareness 
• Facebook/Instagram: Uplift of +8.5 percentage points for ad recall
• YouTube: Uplift of +15.3 percentage points for brand awareness (only significant in men)
• Uplift in Facebook Share or Voice of +5% percentage points compared to previous period

Findings