Ads We Like: WWF stop-motion Christmas ad highlights deforestation impact on wildlife

World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) has slightly verged away from its traditional adoption plea, this Christmas urging its supporters to 'adopt a better future' rather than an animal. 

Operating in over 100 nations, WWF mission is to awaken people to the degradation of natural environments, and call upon support to halt it.

And while over the years WWF has been more focused on animal adoption as a present you give your family member at Christmas, it has changed course - instead spotlighting the real-world impact of these adoptions with a stop-motion animation.

While charity campaigns often apply a hard-hitting approach, the animation contains the hopeful message that collectively people can (and must) end the destruction of nature in the fight against climate change. 

Directed by Noah Harris, the stop-motion film tells the story of a young girl, who sets it upon herself to protect a threatened wild jaguar as it flees his home that is being destroyed by deforestation. 

She rallies a crowd, who stand hand in hand against the face of an impending bulldozer. 

The film concludes in the girl’s bedroom, where we see a charcoal drawing of the endangered jaguar. The charcoal upon which the drawing is made from imbues a deeper message upon the ad: it was created from trees destroyed in a recent rainforest fire. 

The campaign was developed by Uncommon, who won the WWF account last year and tasked with helping the charity to communicate its work

Discussing the campaign, Fanny Calder, director of campaigns at WWF, says: “We often feel that, as individuals, we are helpless to stop the destruction of nature. But when we think of ourselves as a collective, we have real power.

"In order to end deforestation – one of the biggest threats currently facing the future of our planet – it is essential that people and nature work with one another, not against. An area of forest the size of South America has already been cleared to grow the world’s crops, and this destruction is putting treasured wildlife species such as the jaguar in extreme danger.” 

Adding to this, Nils Leonard, co-founder at Uncommon said: “The idea of animal adoption is one people are familiar with, but this is about understanding that you are adopting far more than just a jaguar or a panda, you are adopting a different future. For all of us. Because it’s all connected. Saving our wildlife is saving ourselves.”