WWF South Africa appoints M&C Saatchi Abel and MADE Agency as local partners

After a hotly contested pitch process, WWF South Africa – part of the world’s largest environmental network – has appointed M&C Saatchi Abel & MADE Agency to partner with them.

M&C Saatchi Abel has been appointed as lead agency and will be partnering with MADE, who will be focused on integrating new strategies through digital channels. Together, the agencies are tasked with building a greater awareness and understanding of the meaningful change WWF brings about.

“Working with WWF-SA and M&C Saatchi Abel represents a great opportunity to bring powerful creativity together with our data-centric, digital headspace. We look forward to providing the means to measure strategies against results and helping WWF to maximise their investment in marketing,” says Adam Holtrop, executive creative director at MADE.

Having already worked with entities like the United Nations Food & Agriculture Organisation (headquartered in Rome), A Million Comforts (an initiative which provides sanitary protection to young girls) and its establishment of the Street Store, (the free pop-up clothing store’ for the homeless) M&C Saatchi Abel has amassed significant experience in cause-related marketing. This will prove invaluable as the agency strives to tell a powerful emotional story that cuts through noise and effects a real change in South Africans’ attitudes and, ultimately, their behaviour.

WWF elected to join forces with M&C Saatchi Abel and Made because of their ability to translate brand intentions not only into compelling stories but also to deliver true behaviour change.

Dr Morné Du Plessis, CEO of WWF-SA, says: “We wanted partners that would be fully engaged in helping us drive our brand forward over the long-term by raising awareness and creating an understanding of our many initiatives across so many aspects of South Africa’s environmental realities.”

Jason Harrison, MD at M&C Saatchi Abel Cape Town adds: “While it is a prestige to have a client like WWF-SA in the fold, what matters more is the chance to harness creativity that will benefit not just the client, but society as a whole.”

Together, the agencies are particularly enthusiastic about the challenge of translating conservation from a complex issue that is removed from people’s daily lives into one that has a direct bearing on the way they live.