ABOUT

Concept
We know that when people feel emotionally connected to nature, they’re more likely to care for it, and take action to restore it. We also know – because the scientific evidence shows us – that connecting to nature can do wonders for our mental and emotional health. The Prescription for Nature campaign aimed to reach new audiences for WWF, encouraging them to spend time in nature and experience the many benefits to their wellbeing that accompany regularly connecting with nature, while ultimately fostering a greater sense of care towards our natural world. By connecting with a mass public audience, many of whom might not yet be engaged with environmental issues, we aimed to start people on a journey of care for our environment and increase support for WWF’s mission to protect and restore nature.

Execution
We started with a rigorous review of scientific evidence of the wellbeing benefits to people of spending time in nature, which we collated into a peer-reviewed evidence base report, made available on the WWF UK website. Evidence shows that as little as 20 minutes per day spent in nature can significantly enhance wellbeing, thus our call to action was for people to ‘get your daily dose of nature’. Because mental health is not WWF’s area of expertise, we worked closely with the Mental Health Foundation throughout campaign development, to ensure that our messaging around mental wellbeing was accurate and appropriate.

Particular focus was put on reaching beyond WWF’s usual audiences, to connect with a mass public who might not yet be engaged with nature. Winning ITV’s inaugural ‘Head First Award’ of £1m advertising space enabled the campaign to launch across ITV channels in October 2024. The campaign launched with an advert featuring well-known TV doctor, Dr Sara Kayat writing a ‘prescription for nature’. In addition to airing on linear TV, the ad also featured on video-on-demand and in cinemas. Audiences were encouraged to search ‘WWF Prescription for Nature’ online, driving to a digital platform on the WWF website. The platform houses eight activity bundles, each offering different ways for people to connect with nature. The bundles are carefully tailored to offer everyone a way to bring more nature into their lives, including those who may have accessibility challenges and other requirements. The platform also drives to additional resources tailored for schools, communities and workplaces. A free ‘daily dose of nature pack’ could be ordered to arrive on your doorstep, containing activities for starting to engage with nature. People interacting with the digital platform were invited to opt in to hearing more from WWF, starting them on a journey of embedding time with nature as a habit in their daily lives, and transitioning to ways to help our natural world.

When we restore nature, nature restores us. The link between time in nature and mental health hasn’t been explored in a national campaign before, and was a step into new territory for WWF. It gave us the opportunity to develop something that felt very true to our brand – a strong scientific foundation, lush imagery of nature - while expanding our appeal to a mass audience looking for ways to boost their wellbeing in a challenging world. Our eye-catching, informal creatives - loosely based around the familiar green prescription sheet - showed up wherever our audiences were. On their TV or in the cinema, in train stations and roadside, in print media and on their digital devices. To spread the message, we enlisted the free support of celebrities including Joe Wicks, Geri Halliwell-Horner, Sir Andy Murray, Kedar Williams-Stirling, Ellie Goulding and many more. Photographer Conor McDonnell produced an intimate series of portraits of some of the participating celebrities, shared on social media and picked up extensively in media outlets. We even had an immersive ‘forest den’ experience that travelled around the UK giving people in busy stations or shopping malls the chance to relax in the soothing environment of a Borneo rainforest.

Results
While the campaign is still ongoing, it has seen very strong results since launching last October, with a huge 1.1 billion opportunities to see, over a million engagements and more than 134 thousand campaign actions. As per an April survey, 73% of UK adults who saw or heard about the campaign took a positive action as a result, such as connecting with nature outdoors (45%) or starting a conversation with a friend or family member (16%) (YouGov). In YouGov polling, there’s been a 7% increase in people taking more time to notice and engage with nature everyday, and crucially, a 4% increase in people saying they’re concerned about nature loss, since the campaign launched. More than half of UK adults (58%) that took at least one action after seeing or hearing about the campaign, plan to take further action to protect and restore nature, a positive indicator of our theory of change.