Who Gives A Crap is a social enterprise & B Corp-certified company that makes recycled toilet paper and donates 50% of all their profits to charity. In their own research, they uncovered that the industry was cutting down more than a million trees a day to make traditional toilet paper. We were briefed to raise awareness of this harsh reality and inspire people to switch to recycled toilet paper. The media was already in a stir about the number of classic children’s authors, like Roald Dahl and Dr Seuss, who were having their works revised for modern times. But no literary classics had ever been updated to reflect today’s environmental challenges. With this cultural conversation simmering, and Winnie-The-Pooh having recently entered into the public domain in the US, we set out to be the first. We created 'Winnie-the-Pooh: The Deforested Edition' – a first-of-its-kind reimagining of the iconic 1926 children’s book. A collectors’ edition rather than a new story, we kept A.A.Milne’s original narrative unchanged, but reimagined the illustrations to represent the impact of land cleared every day to make traditional toilet paper.
To land the deforestation message in a single key image, which was critical for earned media, the striking cover design contrasted a delicately foiled golden stump with a blind debossed echo of a healthy tree. Alongside an eBook, the physical books were handmade without cutting down any new trees and produced in a 100% Green-e certified facility. The books contain 100% post-consumer recycled paper and board and 100% cotton EU REACH-certified cover materials. With zero paid media support, the story dominated global headlines, achieving 5.6 billion global reach across 420 media hits.
My role: Executive Creative Director
