Romania is the only place with virgin forests in Europe wide enough to be home to big carnivores in favourable conditions. But, pollution and deforestation affects a lot this wild life.

We aimed to engage youngsters (18-24), a key target for ING, to educate them about wildlife issues in the Carpathians and the work of our partner, Conservation Carpathia (FCC), to protect animals in the area.

As Gen Z responds less positive to advertising (58% of them use adblockers), our message needed to find them organically and be as immersive as possible, to spark their interest. Gaming gave us a platform to deliver a rich story, so we decided to partner with gamers to create educational content in their livestreams, that would not only inform, but entertain and engage. We also wanted make Gen Z react directly (by donating) to the current situation of massive deforestation leaving wild animals homeless.

Wild life is suffering in the Carpathian mountains due to massive deforestation leaving animals homeless, while Gen Z is interested in saving animals and landscapes in games. How could we reach a generation looking up to their favourite streamers and ignoring the news?

We selected their favorite streamers and shook their natural habitat just like the natural habitat of wild animals in the mountains is shaken every day.

While they were playing and live streaming in front of their community, streamers had to deal with:

- extreme warming

- poaching

- landslides

- noise pollution

- air pollution

They played under severe natural conditions, until their community donated enough money for a safer natural habitat for the wild animals.

ING brand message is "do your thing" and what we did here was to disrupt gamers from doing their thing in order to raise donations and awareness on our sustainability cause.

We realised our urban, glued-to-the-screen target viewed the environment and wildlife as distant concepts, something that exists “out there”, with little connection to their immediate realities. We needed a vivid demonstration of the dangers wildlife faces every day, to bring the “out there”, “right here”.

We set out to give our audience a sample of the real feel of having your natural habitat disrupted, by taking apart the natural habitat of gamers which is known to be "untouchable": the chair, the mouse, the monitor, all of these barely even change position.

Nine gamers with big communities took part in a special livestream series that lasted for 9 days in a row. A marathon of WILD LIVES during which we intervened in their gaming rituals and habitats, just like people intervene in the natural habitat of animals, reproducing through special effects and tailored rigs what wild animals are facing every day.

For 28 hours of stream-time during 10 days, we kept our audience engaged and sounded the alarm on an important cause.

With no paid media, we achieved:

835K social media impressions vs. objective 650K(+29%)

209K live views vs. objective 150K (+39%)

+66% in donations than what we asked for. More than 70% of the youngsters who donated during the activation continued to donate for the cause, periodically.

the brand tracker, 3 months after the activation, showed a significant improvement on "a brand that cares for the environment" (+4 points)