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IUCN’s Save Our Species programme contributes to the long-term survival of threatened species, their habitats and the people who depend on them. The highest number of experts. The most precise data. The ability to understand and save our complex ecosystems. The International Union for Conservation of Nature had it all. Yet they struggled to engage and appeal to donors and private sector audiences Species conservation is a highly complex subject and it’s hard to understand which key species to prioritize to avoid irreversible damage to our ecosystems. To raise funds, we needed to clarify this story – and simply explain why saving species is crucial to us, humans. And especially to an ROI-focused and time-starved audience of CEOs and donators. For IUCN SOS, nature is a system in which every species coexists. When one becomes endangered the whole system is at risk. And so are we. We turned their vision into a self-explanatory metaphor: the domino effect. This is something we can all relate to, making the fragile equilibrium of our ecosystem clear. If one domino falls, the whole chain collapses, the last domino being the human species. This made the solution easy to grasp. If the ecosystem is a chain of dominoes that leads back to us, we must keep the wobbling pieces upright to maintain the integrity of the whole chain. If we want to Save Our Species, we must act to keep nature standing. And all brand activations are a call to action to do this This communicative design system enables the creation of impactful, flexible graphics spanning from logo to individual activation stories. With one simple idea applied to its assets, the brand can now tell a story about the risk of the whole system collapsing, as well as the possible extinction of any specific species and its consequences. All the brand’s executions become free communication campaigns, establishing a dialogue with its audiences. The new brand identity was received by the IUCN as a “stroke of genius, telling the whole story in one sight”. Since its brand refresh, IUCN SOS managed to secure $19 million from the European Union, develop further partnerships with Lacoste, Kering and Ikea