Wild Live for The Wild Life was an activation entirely created around gaming universe, during 9 live streaming sessions, amplified only on gaming or gamers' related media channels and built around a gaming insight: a gamer's den is "untouchable", sacred for him and his community just like natural habitat is sacred for the wild life.

So, what if we transferred all the problems caused by pollution and deforestation that affect wild life in the Romanian mountains into the gamers' live streams, right in their "sacred, untouchable dens"? Would they still be able to do their thing and play freely?

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.

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.

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.

Together with the gaming company Nexus, representing the streamers, we were allowed to intervene in the gamers' live streams and affect their set-up in the most brutal way. We basically had gamers live stream from an affected forest landscape look-alike and replicated through special rigs all the natural disasters wild animals are facing.

Every night, between 19th and 28th of November, a live streaming took place (9 in total) and one streamer had to face natural disasters until the community would save him by donating. Gamers really played it well and engaged with their communities.

The campaign had 0 paid media and it took place on the streamers' streaming platforms, being promoted also only on the streamer's channels: Instagram, Youtube and Facebook.

In total, there were 28 hours of live streaming (until enough money was raised to set streamers free) and we gathered 209.000 live views during these streaming hours.

For 28 hours of stream-time during 9 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)

We tend to ignore environmental and climate issues. Romania's civil society is 35+ years old. Adults are the most interested in changing something.

So, every company goes after this piece of target when they need awareness and donations for their causes.

Younger targets are more into climate changing issues than previous generations, yet they are much more interested in what affects them directly (poverty, jobs, education). They were not the most "predictable target".

But we do believe that young people should be aware of what the world they will inherit will look like. We need them on our side and we went towards them using their "language" and interests. Because if we seduce them now, we will have them as our "partners in change" for a long, long time.

Since ING brand message is "do your thing", we simply went after the young target right into "their thing": gaming.