Moxie

The Whio Forever Recovery Programme is a 12-year ongoing partnership between DOC and Genesis to ensure the highly endangered native Whio duck thrives. There is an annual awareness-raising campaign each year, and Moxie was selected as the creative partner for the 2023 Campaign.

This adorable indigenous blue duck — named ‘whio’ after the 'fee-o, fee-o' call of the male — is one of Aotearoa's most appealing and rarest inhabitants. The annual Whio Awareness Campaign has played a significant part in getting people behind the Recovery Programme, and understanding its plight. To date, the approach has been to take a broad brush, targeting the 'general public'.

The brief

The requirement for the 2023 Campaign was to target the more engaged people —outdoor enthusiasts/active nature lovers — to deepen their connection to whio, and heighten their sense of giving back to nature through their actions. The campaign needed to be built around a compelling insight or call to action for this audience. In tone, the would be quirky, tongue-in-cheek, fun and inspiring but respectful to whio as a taonga.

Moxie's solution: Look out for Whio

The expression 'look out for' can mean to look for something, care for, or show concern. The tagline 'Let's look out for whio' speaks directly to people actively engaged in nature. It can flex from being a general statement to targeting specific segments, e.g., Kayakers look out for whio.

The campaign's overall look was bold and highly contrasted to stand out in social media feeds. The colours were drawn from the Whio Forever brand palette, with some custom colours introduced to add impact.

The tagline was used as a campaign graphic with a clearcut photo of the whio. Hero graphics, such as posters, used the full image of the whio. Social media images used a whio leaning in from the side of the frame, adding a sense of playfulness, almost as though the whio is hiding. In some, we animated the whio. The central ideas of the campaign were to get people to post pictures of whio spotted in the wild using #LookOutForWhio, and to post a range of whio facts as tiles.

Department of Conservation

Look out for Whio