THE CHALLENGE

Wild animal trafficking in Brazil has increased dramatically in recent years.

Ampara is the largest and most important animal protection and defense organization in Brazil, recognized by the Brazilian Ministry of Justice as a OSCIP (Civil Society Organization of Public Interest). Its goal is to change society by taking action to support, educate, and raise awareness about animal rights.

Ampara wanted us to come up with an original idea to help alleviate the problem of wild animal trafficking. They asked us to raise awareness of the issue and if possible help them play a part in the reduction of wild animal trafficking.

THE STRATEGY

People spend hours online, liking and sharing content of wild animals, especially those domesticated or raised as pets. We scoured Instagram and TikTok for content featuring domesticated wild animals and tracked engagement over two years. Then we used Google to access the level of demand for wild animals, decoding search trends and calculating precise day-by-day measures.

Through robust data modeling, we unearthed the interplay between the social media and search datasets. Employing power-additive time series regression models, we accounted for the delay between social views and search actions. This enabled us not only to delineate correlations but also to establish causality, providing a measure of social media's impact on driving demand for trafficked animal sales.

The connection between social media and trafficking was clear and indisputable. 37% of searches for monkey purchases and 18% of searches for snake purchases were directly generated by Instagram content.

Most advertising is about increasing purchase intent — our goal was the exact opposite.

Having established the connection, we first called attention to the problem and then trained social media users in a 4-step process to reset their algorithm, reducing demand for content and making animal lovers part of the solution.

We called our data-driven social-first campaign, ‘The Wild Algorithm (Reset).

THE EXECUTION

We launched with an exhibition in one of São Paulo’s busiest areas, where we installed real cages used by traffickers with mobile phones trapped inside that showed wild animals in social media posts to highlight the issue. As well as capturing passers-by, this provided sharable content that was used to raise awareness of the issue on social.

Then, on National Animals Day, we launched the Wild Algorithm Reset with the help of some of Brazil’s biggest influencers truly committed to the cause and Ampara across numerous verticals, including Porta dos Fundos, João Vicente, Sabrina Sato, Thaila Ayala, Ana Hickman, Paolla Oliveira, and many others. Our influencer set had some 106 million followers between them.

They reached out to their followers to spread the word about a simple process that anyone could use to effectively reset the problematic algorithm.

THE OUTCOME

Millions of people participated in the Wild Algorithm Reset, resulting in impactful and significant outcomes. The initiative successfully re-educated the algorithms of 12.1 million individuals and garnered a total of 111 million impressions. This led to a twofold increase in conversations and mentions related to animal trafficking in Brazil. Furthermore, there was a notable global reduction in searches with purchasing intent, with a 15% decrease for monkeys, 6% for parrots, and 5% for snakes. Social media engagement with videos featuring wild animals on Instagram also saw a 12% decline. This heightened public and political awareness prompted a series of law enforcement actions, underscoring the effectiveness of the campaign.