The number of people adopting a penguin over Christmas through WWF-UK increased by 250 per cent on the previous year following a partnership with John Lewis, including a festive advert featuring a penguin.

In 2013 there were 2,278 penguin adoptions during November and December. For the same period in 2014 there were 8,081 adoptions.

In part this was down to the partnership with John Lewis. When the retailer featured a penguin in its Christmas advert it directed shoppers to the charity’s site. WWF-UK’s communications teams were also active in directing people to its adopt a penguin page.

In an interview with Fundraising Magazine, Alison Lucas, executive director of communications and fundraising, said that the ‘adopt a penguin’ campaign was “one of our most successful of recent times, with a 250 per cent increase in the number of penguin adoptions”.

Penguins also overtook polar bears for the first time to be the third most popular animal, behind tigers and snow leopards. When people adopt a penguin they either make a one-off payment of at least £36 or sign up to make a monthly donation of at least £3.

Lucas added that a key reason for the campaign’s success was that lots of different teams were involved.

“We worked closely with our corporate partners team and secured the partnership with John Lewis; we worked with the public engagement team, the social media and traditional media teams, even our public affairs team was involved. We stretched it out across the whole organisation rather than letting it just sit with fundraising and we were able to use all of our channels to market,” she said.

• The full interview is published in the April issue of Fundraising Magazine and online subscribers can read it here. Find out more about subscription options here.

Additional reporting by Stephen Cotterill