Integrated

Birds Records

WWF Russia, Yandex Music

Issue 55 | July 2020

Agency

BBDO Moscow

Creative Team

Executive Creative Director: Alexey Fedorov Copywriter: Petr Martyuk Art-director: Alexey Litovka Digital Creator: Denis Bykov

Production Team

TV Production Director: Irina Noruzi Producer: Mary Asatiani Head of Production: Yuriy Marin Digital Producer: Elena Novoseltseva Digital Art Director: Andrey Krusanov Digital Designer: Sofia Baeva

Other Credits

Managing Director: Natalia Tsyganova Business Director: Alexandr Kuznetsov Account Director: Anastasia Vikulina Account Manager: Valentina Zubareva

Date

December 2019

Background

To fight the extinction of birds WWF needed a stable stream of donations. But charity in Russia is still in its infancy. In 2018, less than half of Russians made donations. Only 2% of the population is subscribed to a monthly charity donation.

Idea

To create a sustainable income for WWF, Yandex.Music and Universal Music applied the streaming model to the charity sector. The birdsong of endangered species was turned into samples and made available for free on condition that all money from streaming went to WWF to fund bird protection. This became the basis for a record label to monetize birdsong.

Birds Records was launched with a track from Ivan Dorn. Soon they had received more than 500 tracks from popular and upcoming artists. The best were selected and they were released as an album. Streaming the album also generates money for birds.

Results

The campaign helped to build awareness of the issue of birds becoming extinct. Birds Records got over 1B impressions. The results are more than impressive: traffic to the WWF website increased by 50% resulting in a steady growth of donations. The donation model itself was changed, making it as simple as clicking the “play” button on a streaming service. For the first two month they got over 1 million rubles, it’s 65% more than the previous most successful WWF campaign for birds. Streaming of the album by Birds Records will generate money for as long as people keep listening to it.