The WWF France #NoBuildChallenge disrupted Fortnite, the world’s most popular eSport, with the first ever eco-friendly challenge. This captured the attention of Fortnite’s audience of passionate young people by bringing to life in an engaging, totally unique way the reality of a planet that is running out of resources.

Through the campaign we were able to use gaming as a social channel, tapping into behaviours of gamers who naturally create and share content with each other. It enabled WWF to give a voice to young people desperate to persuade governments to tackle climate change and save our planet.

The depletion of the earth's natural resources is a major problem which humanity must fight against to save the planet and its inhabitants. Yet every year we continue to use more natural resources than the earth is able to offer.

Today some active young citizens who will inherit the planet left by the older generations are determined to make their voices heard. Following in the footsteps of the young Swedish activist Greta Thunberg, students all over the world have been actively protesting in the streets during the past few months in support of the anti-climate change movement. They are united by the hashtag #FridaysForFuture and aim to spur our governments into action – but not all young people have the same awareness about the environment.

WWF France decided to help them take action and to carry this message loud and clear among them.

To help the young generation amplify their message, WWF France wanted to illustrate the ecological challenges of tomorrow in an entertaining yet impactful way, using one of the main media of conversation and creativity for them: video games.

One game in particular, Fortnite, best reflects the ecological issues of tomorrow. In-game, natural resources (wood, stone, metal) help players build and protect themselves from enemy fire, find shelter, move around the map and ultimately reach the Victory Royal.

We created the first eco-friendly challenge: the #NoBuildChallenge. The rule is simple – players must proceed through the game without exploiting any natural resources even though their opponents can still use them. As finishing the game becomes extremely tricky, the players can share our message with a proof of experience : without the planet’s natural resources it’s going to be hard for us to stay alive.

Young audiences are notoriously difficult to reach with traditional advertising. As they don’t react well to top down or intrusive brand messages, we chose another way to engage them where they are: within the Fortnite game they spend an average of six to 10 hours on each week.

The #NoBuildChallenge taps into behaviours of gamers who naturally create and share content: rules and tips of the game are conveyed by fellow gamers, conversations naturally occur in friends-chats and on gaming stream websites such as Twitch or YouTube. The partnership with prestigious gamers like the Solary team encouraged gamers to share content on their social feeds. And because the challenge was difficult to achieve, it was even more rewarding for the successful gamers to demonstrate their skills while communicating WWF’s message: if we do not change the rules, we will not survive. And without natural resources, it’s hard to stay alive.

- The #NoBuildChallenge campaign was kickstarted on April 5 on the Solary Twitch channel, one of the biggest French pro-gaming teams with 740,000 followers, before being broadcasted on Youtube.

- The Solary gamers then invited their audiences to challenge their best scores and raise awareness of ecological emergencies amongst their peers.

- The day after, four high-profile YouTube gamers with four million followers combined, took the challenge.

- More gamers followed suit, uploading footage their attempts to take on the challenge on social media, creating a snowball effect. Thanks to the comments section of the different social-lives, audiences were able to interact with streamers to share their vision of our ecological issues. Viewers and players were getting informed about WWF missions and sharing how they can change their behaviours to protect our planet.

- Live games and recorded content will be broadcasted until Earth Day on April 22.

Over one week and without any media investment, the #NoBuildChallenge generated no fewer than 1.5 millions views on YouTube. #NoBuildChallenge was the number on trending topic on YouTube Gaming France on launch day, with hundreds of young streamers taking up the challenge.

Thousands of fans viewed, engaged and shared the content on social media, generating over 12 million impressions on Twitter, while online press coverage of the campaign reached 500 million unique visitors worldwide in mainstream titles like Konbini, BFM TV, Cnews, Paris Match, RTL, Europe 1 and LCI as well as gaming, lifestyle and ecology publications.

The local French initiative generated so many conversations among young communities that WWF Worldwide is now planning to launch the challenge later this year at an international level, reaching over six million members in 100 countries.