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Tiger Beer uses ‘selfie’ campaign to raise awareness of illegal tiger trade

Asian beer brand Tiger has unveiled a tool to allow people to create a bespoke tiger-inspired selfie as part of an awareness campaign for the World Wildlife Fund.

The Heineken-owned brand has teamed up with SapientRazorfish Singapore and Sydney-based creative agency Marcel, to create the campaign to raise awareness of the illegal trade in wild tigers.

According to WWF, the number of wild tigers has dropped from 100,000 to 3,890 over the last century. Based on that figure, the brand has created the 3890 website. It allows visitors to upload a selfie and transform it with a number of specially-created filters crafted by renowned global artists.

The designs include street-art-meets-calligraphy, delicate paint and ink illustrations or fluttering rainbow origami – from artists including China’s Hua Tunan, France’s Mademoiselle Maurice, Malaysia’s Kenji Chai, Russia’s Nootk, UK’s Nick Gentry or USA’s TranNguyen.

Users are encouraged to share their selfie on social media with the hashtag #3890Tigers. Tigers are often illegally caught and killed so that their body parts can be used in Chinese medicine.

An example of a filtered ‘tiger’ selfie

The campaign follows a six-year deal signed by Tiger Beer and WWF for to support Tx2, a global commitment made by the governments of the 13  countries where tigers live in the wild in order to double the world’s wild tiger population to 6,000 by 2022. Tiger Beer has also donated US$1 million to the cause.

In Asia, the brand will also be temporarily removing the tiger from its logo – for the first time in 84 years – and introducing a limited-edition design on select packaging.

The campaign is being promoted on social media in Singapore, the birthplace of Tiger Beer, as well as Malaysia, Cambodia, China and Hong Kong. There will be no print or television media.

But on July 29, Global Tiger Day, there will be a “series of activations” to celebrate the support garnered over the eight-week period, although the format of these is yet to be revealed.

“It is an honour for us to partner WWF in support of their conservation efforts,” said Mie-Leng Wong, global director at Tiger Beer, Heineken Asia Pacific. “We can’t imagine a world without tigers and if they disappear, it would not only have an environmental impact, but also be a real loss for our culture.

“That is why we have chosen art as a way to express this together with our consumers. 3890Tigers brings people and artists together through technology and our goal is to inspire a global movement by empowering a generation of young people to make a stand against the illegal tiger trade and make demand for products with tiger parts socially unacceptable.”

Ogilvy Singapore is handling the campaign’s public relations account.

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