The Challenge
Founded in 1974, WILD is the only international organization dedicated entirely and explicitly to wilderness protection around the world. Their work spans decades and continents, but while vital to wilderness conversation, their efforts lack the flashiness that is often necessary to compete for donor dollars in the modern world. The WILD Foundation needed a new online presence to further evangelize their base and attract new supporters while ensuring that they didn’t marginalize their message in an attempt to be new and hip. Furthermore, in the fall of 2009 WILD wheld the 9th World Wilderness Congress in Mexico, the latest in a series of historic conferences stretching back to 1977. With this conference upcoming, WILD needed to build and leverage an online community that would elevate the message of the Congress both now and in the future. With these needs before them, they came to Pandemic Labs.
The Solution
Pandemic Labs worked with the WILD Foundation to completely revise their online presence. Once a dry, dense website, WILD.org is now a vibrant nexus of information, media, discussion, news, and more. WILD’s new home online presents visitors with clear paths to the information they want and serves the needs of both the casual supporter and conservation professional. The rich community areas on the website are only the first step in a broader social footprint spanning Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and other online channels. The WILD Foundation is now more accessible than ever before. This new exposure and digital presence is complimented by ongoing outreach and promotion to spread the word about WILD to people around the world. These online channels also provide the platform on which Pandemic Labs broadcast the 9th World Wilderness Congress like no Congress before.
The Results
Our work with WILD was so multi-faceted that it is hard to sum up all of our results here. Since the launch of the new WILD.org, the site has risen from a PR3 to a PR6 and website traffic has increased by over 350%. WILD’s online exposure has also increased dramatically due to our targeted blogger outreach and our success in establishing partnerships between WILD and influential conservation Websites such as EcoWorldly.com.
Use of these platforms to broadcast WILD9 was also a huge success with over 10,000 online participants from over 100 countries around the world. This marked the first time that a World Wilderness Congress was truly experienced by the world in real-time with live-streaming video, blogging, and twitter.
To see videos from WILD9, click here.
World Wilderness Congress Overview from The WILD Foundation on Vimeo.
