Crafting an incredibly successful brand for a wildlife charity

The Trust needed a campaign identity for it's big autumn campaign - Saving Ecuadors Chocó Forest. The campaign was raising money to enable their partners in Ecuador to purchase an increasingly important part of rainforest, home to an incredible wealth of biodiversity, including the iconic and powerful Jaguar, Harpy Eagle, Horned Marsupial Frog and the critically endangered Brown-headed Spider Monkey.

With that in mind, we needed the campaign identity to be bold and eye catching, with the power to engage our donors and transport them to the Ecuadorian Chocó, right here at home.

The campaign was so successful that it raised it's initial £500,000 goal within 2 weeks of launch, meaning that the charity could go on to raise £925,000 for Fundación Jocotoco, enabling them to purchase 4,843 acres (1,960 ha) of Ecuadorian Chocó rainforest.

Campaign identity - Logo - Colours - Typography - Social Media Content - Advertising - both printed and online

The campaign identity had to be created in 2 days, alongside a campaign that was to run in tandem. This put serious time restraints on what could be achieved in the time available, and put pressure on the team to make this campaign a success.

I also had to work with a restrictive budget for visual assets that I could buy, enabling me to choose a few keystone species images that I could use across the advertising and social media feeds.

The real challenge of the branding was creating something that could highlight the sheer number of species that lived within this small slither of rainforest, a place with the diversity of the Amazon rainforest, and more bird species than North America and Europe combined.

The identity was minimal and clean, and served the purpose of the campaign well. So well in fact, that we hit our initial fundraising target within 2 weeks of launch, enabling us to do another round of fundraising for the partners.

I created a topography map led design, which highlighted the incredibly dense areas of diversity in the forest. It aimed to raise awareness of the areas that have been damaged through years of deforestation in the area, and the small pockets of incredibly dense rainforest in the tighter rings of the design.

This, paired with the iconic eyes of the keystone species that we chose to highlight the appeal, helped connect our audience to the needs of these incredible species that lived within the rainforest.

We released adverts across various magazines and online sources to spread the word about the appeal, and I liaised with the publishers to ensure the files were print ready.

As well as the advertising and brand identity, I created the social media content. Working alongside the copywriters, I created a visual journey through the rainforest, highlighting key species that you may find as you venture deeper into the Ecuadorian Chocó.