Baidu's #TheLastConservation banks on quirky animations

Excelled the art of turning a blind eye or simply pointing fingers at the world, a massive chunk of the society has exploited the selflessness of our environment. To give us a stern reality check this World Environment Day, Baidu India speaks out about #TheLastConservation on a digital forum for the mute wildlife, suffering in silence.

As the world has accelerated its pace, unfortunately only a minority are empathetic to the critical concerns of the wildlife. Hence, to be a voice for the wild, Baidu a leading Chinese-language Internet search provider brings out this topic teaming up with WWF and UNDP, leveraging World Environment Day and thus building a community.

Voicing the cry of the wild

Always believed in supporting the wildlife, environment, and stressing on sustainable development it is safe to say that Baidu has built its campaigns sticking to one philosophy. Building such an identity of the brand, the brand has sculpted an identity for itself.

Flesh trade in the country is not restricted to humans but, practiced mercilessly on the wild animals keeping humanity on the backseat in the name of fashion. Differing from personal styles and desires, wearing or accessorizing animal furs and parts has its own exotic charms in the world of the wealthy.

In this filthy game of the rich, wildlife is turning into rags. Drawing attention to this agony is what #TheLastConservation is all about. A campaign ran on animated, story-telling creatives about the illegal trades of wildlife through their mascot DU Bear formed the crust of it.

Talking about the social media plan around the campaign the brand shared, "The theme for 2016 World Environment Day (WED) is Go Wild For Life - Zero tolerance for the illegal wildlife trade. As part of Baidu India’s continued advocacy for sustainable development and other environmental issues, we took this opportunity to create awareness around wildlife depletion and cruelty against animals at the hand of humans."

It was a stringing connection with The Jungle Book, naming the animals as the characters in the movie attempting to make it more interactive, considering the recent movie made big bucks at the box office.

Speaking about animations the brand further shared, "Animations were used (cartoon drawings) to communicate this message precisely because the medium is unexpected. You would not expect to see an animation portraying such a serious issue, so it makes you look a second time."

The campaign which was conducted in a single phase spoke through their creatives about the rising wildlife illegal trade to turn them into market products and put a multi-digits tag on them.

Campaign conclusion

A prolonged campaign from June 1 to June 5 was run solely on creatives. The soul of the campaign lacked meat though it picked up on a core aspect of wildlife destruction. Running merely on limited creatives over a length failed to hold on to the seriousness of the campaign.

The creatives received over 5.1k reactions on their every creative which does show how the campaign managed to engage its audience.

Basing on simplicity yet addressing a grave issue Baidu attempted to make its name in the social-verse through a thoughtful, simple campaign.