WWF announces landmark series to be produced by BBC StoryWorks

WWF is thrilled to announce a new digital series exploring the role of the business community in mitigating critical challenges facing our planet. The series will be produced by BBC StoryWorks Commercial Productions and will launch on BBC.com in spring 2022.
 
We face unprecedented challenges. Stark scientific warnings and the increasingly pronounced impact of climate crises on the lives of people around the world make clear that the window to act is closing fast.
 
These large-scale problems require large-scale solutions, and bold, authentic participation from business will be crucial in unlocking progress, and elevating the vital work being done by the WWF and other science-based organisations - whether tackling climate change, future-proofing food systems or protecting precious ecosystems and wildlife.
 
While no one organisation has the answer, it is through a collective push for action across sectors and systems that necessary, radical transformation can happen.   
 
The series will profile case studies of innovative, under-reported solutions across the global business community that address critical challenges, sharing diverse success stories of collaborative solutions. The ambitions for the series are to:

• Create a blueprint for business action, championing those organisations and initiatives that serve as exemplars to inspire others to follow suit
• Support radical transparency and accountability in businesses through honest, documentary-style videos which explore the contributions of the global business community to environmental issues as well as solutions
• Share human perspectives in content which can capture the imagination, helping remind audiences that climate change, natural disasters and biodiversity loss affect us all.

To achieve this, the BBC Storyworks’ creative teams will craft a unique, immersive series of mini-documentary-style films, written articles, and audio content. Organisations across the globe are striving to transform markets, turn investment to impact and forge a more responsible relationship with the planet and its precious inhabitants. Visually arresting case studies will explore progress made – and distance left to cover – by these organisations across multiple continents and contexts. Stories will be woven together with strong, human-led narratives, beautifully crafted picture sequences and diverse characters.
 
The series will be hosted on a dedicated BBC.com microsite. A 12-month campaign will drive relevant audiences from the site’s global user base, which numbered 144m unique browsers and 1.2 billion page views last month alone, as well as reaching priority groups through the WWF network and social media.
 
We anticipate that this campaign will achieve genuine engagement with BBC.com audiences, for whom climate change is a more pressing issue than ever: a 2021 survey of site users run by BBC Global News found that more than half of respondents have become more concerned about climate change in the past year.
 
Simon Shelley, VP Programme Partnerships at BBC StoryWorks, said: “Whilst the need to create environmental change at scale is more internalised than ever before, at BBC StoryWorks we’ve become fascinated by how that transformation happens. We’re thrilled to be producing a series with the WWF to cement that link between nature and our lives, showing the bold actions from a variety of organisations that are unlocking progress. We’re excited to see how audiences respond.”
 
Felicity Glennie Holmes, Executive Director of Communications and Marketing at WWF International, said: “This partnership unites the world’s most trusted broadcaster with one of the world’s most influential environmental voices, to tell the stories of how we can meet our greatest challenges and safeguard the future of planet, people and nature. Together we will show some of the exciting ways that we are collaborating with partners to help make our world nature-positive by 2030 – that is, to be living in a world in 2030 with more nature than is in the world today. It’s an ambitious goal that needs governments, business and civil society to work together and transform the ways that we think, eat, produce, consume and live, all around the world. It needs all of our creativity and commitment - but together, we can do this.”
 
Organisations within the WWF network will be invited to submit stories and ideas for consideration, with the opportunity to engage BBC StoryWorks Commercial Productions’ creative teams to produce content in line with the above criteria.