WWF Austria teamed up with specialist NGO marketing agency Gallafilz on an influencer marketing campaign to raise awareness among young Austrians about how even small changes to their dietary habits can have a positive impact on the environment.
The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) is the world’s leading conservation organization, operating in some 100 countries. Its mission includes helping local communities conserve national resources, driving transformation of markets and policies towards sustainability, and protecting and restoring wildlife habitats. WWF Austria is an independent entity of the international organization and non-profit NGO. WWF Austria counts more than 110,000 supporters and donors and has been committed to protecting Austrian flora and fauna since 1963.
Specialists in fundraising campaigns for NGOs, non-profits, foundations, and clubs, Munich-based marketing agency Gallafilz has 20 years’ experience in social commitment marketing. Its mission is to create a bridge between fundraising, creativity and gaming to support nonprofits in their quest for a better world. With clients including Germany’s biggest child welfare NGO, SOS Kinderdorf, and WWF Austria on its roster, Gallafilz Agency are experts in leveraging Influencer Marketing to reach new audiences for NGOs and nonprofits.
According to WWF, up to 37% of global greenhouse emissions can be attributed to the food sector, making our diets a significant contributor to the climate crisis. Co-financed by the European Union, #Eat4Change aimed to drive greater understanding of how even small changes to our eating habits and increasing the proportion of plant-based foods in our diet, can help reduce greenhouse emissions and protect the planet.
With several WWF offices across Europe participating in Eat4Change, WWF Austria approached Gallafilz to conduct an influence campaign targeted specifically towards young Austrian audiences.
Running over several months, Eat4Change aimed to drive awareness amongst young Austrians on the impact of their food choices on “people and planet”, and to encourage them to start making changes to their daily eating habits.
To reach a diverse audience, Gallafilz Head of Digital Elisabeth Krautbauer decided to enlist both food and climate change content creators for the campaign. However, the result of the KOL research process confirmed food creators were the most receptive to the campaign objectives.
“Kolsquare was very helpful. We used it a lot to find content creators in the food space, but we also tried to reach different audience bubbles. In this situation, what was best about Kolsquare was that we were able to narrow down the search to approach only Austrian creators, or creators with huge audiences in Austria. That was a huge benefit in achieving the goals of the campaign,” comments Krautbauer.
Krautbauer selected 14 KOLs with audiences ranging from 3K to more than 100K followers for the WWF #Eat4Change campaign. Most were paid a nominal amount to produce Reels, Posts, Stories, or TikToks, but were given a wide creative berth to create engaging content that would resonate with their audiences.
KOLs were briefed with a fact sheet containing key information about WWF Austria, the #Eat4Change campaign and fun facts to share like the average meat consumption of Austrians.
“For inspiration, we also drew up some concepts for challenges that could be run in a livestream, but we didn’t insist on any particular content format. We were in close contact with the content creators. We were surprised by the positive feedback, and by how many people really wanted to educate themselves and their audiences on this topic,” comments Krautbauer.
The depth and complexity of climate change as a topic meant KOLs had a lot of questions before they felt confident enough in their understanding of the issues to post publicly. Krautbauer estimates she had between two and 20 contacts with each KOL throughout the course of the campaign.
The WWF Austria #Eat4Change influencer campaign ran for the better part of a year and set a specific target of engagements to achieve before its conclusion.
The complexity of the campaign — from the topic to the number of KOLs involved — ensured that operationally-speaking, Krautbauer and her team were juggling several balls at once. This included explanatory calls with KOLs, follow-up contacts to remind them to post, and monitoring content and KPIs as they came in.
“We monitored the campaign really closely. We checked with content creators when they planned to publish so we could see it live, but the benefit of Kolsquare was having all the content centralized so we could monitor it over time, and never missed anything if it was posted on the weekend,” comments Krautbauer.
Although #Eat4Change was aimed at raising awareness, WWF Austria wanted to ensure the campaign would have a real and lasting impact on key audiences. To this end, it imposed a target on the #Eat4Change campaign of delivering 122K engagements before the Europe-wide campaign was scheduled to end in April 2024.
Overall, the Eat4Change Austrian campaign delivered more than half a million impressions. But the reality of influencer marketing is that higher the number of followers a KOL has, the lower the engagement rate.
Knowing that Twitch livestreams are fantastic vectors for driving engagement through the live chat, Krautbauer decided to leverage the same dynamic through TikTok livestreams. The aim was to encourage interaction between the KOL and the target audience and boost the campaign’s overall engagement rate.
“During the project we focused a lot on live sessions on TikTok because there are a lot of interactive choices available in the format. Audiences can like, comment and send creators gifts. Creators can also interact with their audiences in a more meaningful manner because a livestream can go for as long as you want, not just for 15 seconds,” comments Krautbauer. “Livestreams are the way to go for interacting with the audience.”
The success of the strategy is evident in the results. With the campaign kicking off in May 2023, Gallafilz had reached the target of 122K engagements with four months to spare before the deadline.
“WWF Austria were very happy with the campaign. Previously, they hadn’t worked a lot with influencers and so it was really a positive surprise to them that these kinds of creators were interested and motivated to work with them,” comments Krautbauer.
To learn more about how Kolsquare can help your organization achieve its goals — and our preferential pricing rates for NGOs and nonprofits — click here to book a demo with one of our influence experts.
