Adverting Campaign LO:1 Advert:4

WWF - Stop Wildlife Crime

The WWF Stop Wildlife Crime advertising campaign consists of a series of adverts featuring Christina Grenard, a "splash" artist who uses a contemporary technique to create interesting looking paintings of animals. The campaign ran four adverts all with the title "I am not" with a noun at the end (medicine, a souvenir, a trinket, a rug) to raise awareness of animal poaching. Each advert features multiple stats and statistics (such as the "I am not medicine" advert that shows text reading "one killed every twelve hours" and "Killed to make medicines that cure nothing" referring to elephant poaching) to use the issue of poaching to enforce the campaign message. The key message of the campaign is that wild animals are not for human consumption, they don't exist so that we can benefit from their flesh, skin and bones. They just want to live their lives in peace.

The advert would appeal mostly to animal lovers and conservationists but as this advertising campaigns goal is to raise awareness and not sell a product, I would argue that there is no specific target audience and that this advertising campaign is aimed at everyone so that the WWF can educate the public on the threats these animals are facing and what is at risk if we do not take action. 

To engage the audience the advert shows live footage of Christina Grenard creating a painting of an animal using splash art, an uncommon art technique that is likely to grab the viewers curiosity and make them watch the advert to see what she is creating as at the start of the advert this is not made clear. 

The adverts were also backed up with a number of short, ten minute documentaries that the viewer could access by going to the website linked to the YouTube advert. These gave more detail on the issues shown in the adverts and provided a separate approach to enforce the campaign message.

The advert itself covers many legal and ethical issues in its content but before releasing the advert the WWF would have had to make sure that all the facts shown in the advert were true.