Who Gives A Crap is loved by eco-friendly customers for its 100% recycled and bamboo toilet paper in Australia, the US and the UK.

But with one million trees destroyed each day to manufacture traditional toilet paper, much more is needed to highlight the impact of deforestation.

We commissioned research that showed 29% of children have raised concerns about deforestation with their parents, with 38% of adults not even knowing that traditional toilet paper is made from trees.

Who Gives A Crap needed to distinguish itself from the category and break people from their destructive bathroom habits by getting them to update their toilet paper from traditional to recycled.

With a limited production budget and only six weeks from concept phase to live date, we were briefed to come up with an idea, produce it, and then launch it globally to resonate with an international audience.

Winnie-the-Pooh: The Deforested Edition – a first-of-its-kind reimagining of the iconic 1926 children’s book – highlights the impact of deforestation across the globe, and launched in Australia, the US and the UK.

Positioned as a rare edition, we kept the original narrative completely unchanged, retaining the magic of Winnie-the-Pooh and A.A. Milne as the author.

The book’s illustrations were reimagined to represent the impact of land cleared every day to make traditional toilet paper. The revisions also extended to the Hundred Acre Wood map at the start of each book, depicting the widespread environmental impact of deforestation on all of Winnie-the-Pooh's friends.

To dial up the rarity, 250 physical books were handmade without cutting down a single tree and produced in a 100% Green-e certified facility, using only renewable and carbon-neutral energy. The books contain 100% post-consumer recycled paper and board and 100% cotton EU REACH-certified cover materials.

Media was already in a stir about the number of classic children’s authors, like Roald Dahl, who were having parts of their works revised for modern sensibilities. Exploring this, we realised that no literary classics had ever been updated to reflect today’s environmental challenges.

With this cultural conversation simmering, we set out to be the first.

In an almost too-good-to-be-true moment, A. A. Milne’s original collection of stories about the character “Winnie-the-Pooh” had recently entered the public domain in the US, meaning we could leverage this iconic, and extremely relevant, story without retribution from the owner of Mickey Mouse.

It also happened to be the best-loved children’s book of all time.

By leveraging the existing cultural debate and a never-before-done IP re-imagining, we created rich assets that were seeded to media – including the physical book, before and after imagery, deforestation stats and interviews with Who Gives A Crap spokespeople.

To launch, we released a suite of media assets including before-and-after imagery of our ‘deforested’ Winnie-The-Pooh images, along with research on its impact.

Who Gives A Crap’s Co-Founder Danny Alexander also provided commentary to tier one media titles including The Washington Post, NPR and Daily Mail.

As anticipated, “anti-woke” sentiment stirred the (honey) pot about Winnie-the-Pooh becoming “Wokey-the-Pooh”. Leveraging this opportunity and responding to the Eeyores, negative headlines were reimagined as thought leadership commentary across earned and owned socials by our sustainability spokesperson on the real-world impact of deforestation, and the importance of reducing our use of virgin resources.

We used hero imagery from the book across our owned assets, including custom Winnie-The-Pooh toilet paper wrappers to further spread the message, alongside a series of “BookTok” content on TikTok and Instagram created with partner eco-conscious creators.

With no paid media support, the book led to a giant leap in brand awareness, strong commercial returns, and lasting environmental impact:

-     Global headlines reached 5.6 billion with 420 individual media hits.

-     Contributed to an increase in YoY brand awareness across our three markets, specifically +44.8% in AUS, +50% in USA & +125% in the UK.

-     Coverage in Tier 1 global media titles including The Washington Post, NPR, Daily Mail, The Sun, The Mirror, The Australian, and Sky News.

-     Books sold out in under 48 hours.

-     Organic socials achieved 445 shares & 4509 clicks.

-     Most importantly, in only two weeks, over 3000 new customers joined, equating to saving *107,719m² of forest and offsetting *632,182kg³ of carbon dioxide.

*Modelling based on new customers acquired during the campaign (average 60-month purchasing lifecycle) with the amount of trees saved from switching to recycled toilet paper.