In early 2010, WWF made a worldwide resolution to double the world’s tiger population by 2020. An extremely urgent step, given that only 3,200 tigers still lived in the wild at the time. 100 years ago, the figure was over 100,000.

WWF Belgium subsequently put the topic at the top of its priority list for 2015 and set up a tiger adoption programme that gave people the opportunity to adopt a tiger for just €9 per month.

It was a major challenge for WWF Belgium to recruit new donors in an already saturated NGO market. Especially given that the world’s tiger population is not exactly top of mind in Belgium where the threats facing the species are virtually unknown.

So how could we make Belgians relate to a cause that’s happening so far away from them and convince a new target group to adopt a tiger for €9 per month?

By linking it to their own family. Because more than 30% of the Belgian population carries a family name that’s becoming extinct too.

So, we launched a national call to all these families to adopt a tiger into their family:

Families on the verge of extinction save a family on the verge of extinction.

Via a centralised online platform, www.reddetijger.be (www.savethetiger.be), we offered people the ability to discover how many Belgians there are left were with the same family name. And invited them to help save another family threatened with extinction by adopting a tiger.

The “Save the Tiger” story had to reach as broad a target group as possible with a very limited media budget. Which called for a short campaign with immediate impact.

Free publicity therefore became the corner stone of the media strategy, to drive traffic to the campaign website right from the word go.

To that end, we decided to leverage certain famous Belgians with a rare surname and induct them into our public relations campaign.

As a result of our PR strategy, virtually all national radio broadcasters picked up the story and the tiger’s predicament even rated a mention on TV news and talk shows. One day after the launch, national newspapers published more in depth articles on the problem and the need for long-term support.

The decision to go with a public relations approach focused on digital media allowed us to book strong results very quickly.

In just 3 days, the campaign reached 1 in 3 Belgians on social media and generated a total PR value that was 12 times higher than the campaign budget.

And thanks to the massive influx of new people and a clear, long-term effect during the entire month that followed, we succeeded in reaching and even significantly surpassing our target of doubling the amount of tiger adoptions. Over the course of the campaign in just 1 month, the number of online adoptions tripled.