The ask: For the San Diego Zoo, the rebranding challenge was to transform the zoo from entertainment destination to influential conservation organization.
The context: Most people are unaware of the role zoos play in conservation. The reality is that zoos are already critical in preserving rare species by helping them mate and that their vast medical expertise often saves sick animals in the wild.
The insight: I stumbled across the statistic that if you took all the animals on the plants and weighed them, only 10% of that weight would be made of wild animals. This means that 90% is made up of farm animals. We needed to use this as a way to show that zoos aren’t collecting animals, they are preserving the future of the rarest animals on the planet.
The strategy: People have “starving polar bear”fatigue. Cute animal content has way more shareability than catastrophic content which dominated the non profit category. So we used humour as a way to stun people out of their complacency about conservation and cement the San Diego Zoo’s role as thought leaders.
The idea: Our campaign used sheep disguised as wildlife to confront people with the hard fact that you can’t replace wildlife once it’s gone. But the rebranding strategy influenced everything from logo and signage to nomenclature. Zoo keepers became animal behavioral experts, enclosures became habitats.
