The archive · Marketing & Growth · Marketing decision · 2023–2024
WWF's mobile banner saves a screen-sized patch of Amazon rainforest with every click
A click on WWF's first mobile banner protects a rainforest patch exactly the size of your screen, making every donation's impact visible on the spot.
WWF
What it had to solve
WWF depends on donations, but people hesitate to give because they do not know what actually happens with their money. The brief was to remove that doubt at the moment of giving.
How it works
WWF is an NGO that lives on donations, yet many would-be donors hesitate for one reason: they cannot see what happens with their money. A cause as large and distant as the Amazon rainforest makes that doubt worse.
'Save What You See' answered with a mobile banner instead of another appeal. Described as the first mobile banner of its kind, it visualized the impact of every donation on the Amazonian rainforest: clicking the banner protected a piece of rainforest for free, in the exact size of the user's mobile screen.
That screen-sized patch made saving the rainforest transparent — users could watch the outcome of a click take the shape of their own screen. On the landing page, the campaign then motivated users to protect even more rainforest, this time with their own money.
Why it lands
- It removed the specific objection — 'I don't know what my money does' — by showing a concrete unit of impact before asking for anything.
- The free click let donors experience the effect first; the landing page then converted that demonstrated impact into a paid donation.
- Sizing the protected patch to the user's mobile screen made a distant stretch of forest personal and immediate.
- Transparency was not claimed in the copy; it was built into the mechanism of the ad itself.
What it did
The banner turned an abstract donation into something the donor could see being saved at the moment of the click, and that demonstrated impact led users on to protect more with their own money. The work is held in the D&AD awards archive.
What you can take
When the barrier is trust in where money goes, shrink the outcome to one visible unit the donor can watch happen — the demonstration does the persuading.
Since then
Save What You See ran as a digital donation campaign for WWF's Amazon work and was recognized with a place in the D&AD awards archive and the D&AD Annual 2024.
Sources
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