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Like all great ideas, this fresh concept from the World Wildlife Fund is bound to provoke a thousand “why didn’t we think of that” reactions this holiday season.
For more than 45 years, WWF has been protecting the future of nature. As their name and panda logo suggest, a lot of their efforts go towards protecting animals. But saving habitats—especially trees—is just as vital.
And they’ve come up with an ingenious way of doing it:
WWF is promoting a form of PDF files that cannot be printed, only saved digitally. They call it (perfect branding) a .WWF file. Downloading the .WWF application is simple; after that, it’s just a matter of saving documents with the .WWF suffix, instead of .PDF.
Since a large printed PDF file can literally consume an entire tree’s worth of paper, it’s fair to say, as the organization does, “SAVE AS .WWF. SAVE A TREE.”
The effort is being promoted with an informative, elegant and refreshingly un-preachy video at YouTube.com. The visuals dramatize the problem and make the solution a no-brainer.
Why does this make sense now? Because December is traditionally a paper-intensive month. Not just wrapping paper, but ream after ream of year-end reports, projections, evaluations and summaries. WWF makes us think: do we really need 10 hard copies of this? Do we really need any?
Forms of secure (unprintable) PDF files have been around for a while, but branding this technology for WWF feels exactly right—like part of its DNA. It fits perfectly with the organization’s foundation in science and its delivery of innovative solutions that serve humans and nature. And it meshes with WWF’s mission of conserving 19 of the world’s most important natural places by 2020.
Emotionally, year’s end is the season for new resolutions and fresh starts—a good time to make the .WWF option a new habit.
In short, here’s a holiday message that not only breaks through the clutter but actually helps eliminate clutter. This idea may not save the world, but saving a few million trees is a pretty good start.
Antidote 360, an integrated marketing agency focused exclusively on health and wellness marketing solutions, helps brands and retailers realize their potential in this dynamic landscape. Fran Greenberg is senior vice president of Antidote 360. She can be reached at [email protected].
