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WWF #Eat4 Change brief
Helping people make the plate-planet link
Background
This work was produced for an assignment as part of M&C Saatchi's Open House course that I completed in October 2022. The assignment involved producing creative work for Eat4Change, a pre-existing campaign run by WWF that encourages sustainable eating habits. The following is #Eat4Change background:
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The way our food is produced and consumed doesn’t have to destroy nature and habitats for wildlife. Our food system can provide sustainable, healthy and affordable food for everyone. While there’s growing awareness of the impact of food production on our planet in the UK, this isn’t always translated into actual eating habits or people taking action to influence the food system.
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Launching in 2020, WWF's Eat4Change campaign seeks to engage young people (aged 15-35) to shift towards eating more sustainable diets. By 2024 they want youth to have a greater awareness of the impact of food choices on the planet, understand their role as consumers, embrace more sustainable diets and influence their peers to do the same. Eat4Change is not a vegan or vegetarian campaign - it only seeks to encourage people to eat better in order to reverse the decline in our world's biodiversity by eating more plants and less meat.
Brief
"We want to encourage 11-12 million people, predominantly 15-35 year olds in the UK, to #Eat4Change (e.g. help nature by making more sustainable choices in their diets by eating more plants and less meat) and show them that this can be simple and inexpensive. Produce a poster and/or social activation that promotes awareness of and engagement with the #Eat4Change campaign."
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Process
This assignment followed on from a strategic task in which a strategic proposition for the poster/activation to be based on had been selected. The Open House course director chose the following proposition:
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Task insight: Get people to make a conscious decision every time they eat
Customer truth: Young people feel overwhelmed and powerless in the face of the climate crisis
Brand truth: Just three meat free days a week makes a world of difference
Proposition: Vote with your plate (every time you eat)
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Riffing off of the customer truth and resulting campaign proposition, it seemed evident that the audience base was in need of some plate-based empowerment. I kept thinking of the links between plate and planet - how much of an impact choices around one have on the other, how both are round, and how balance, variety and sustainability on both is essential for the survival of humans.
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I initially came up with copy propositions such as "Activate your plate" to emphasise the idea that people's food choices can be used as a form of activism to make a difference, and "Eating sustainably doesn't have to cost the earth" to help dispel the misnomer of increased cost associated with reducing meat in one's diet. Other copy ideas included "Vote with your plate before it's too late" for a more urgent tone, "Protect our planet, one plate at a time", "Keep the atmosphere clean: turn your plate green" "For fork's sake - fuel your body, feed the future" "Fork off with meat: embrace the future today", "Keep animals in nature and activate your plate for good", "Give a fork; secure your future", and "Your plate, your planet. Activate your plate to make a global difference today"
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After playing around with these phrases and more, I came to the conclusion that the core proposition was that ultimately, it's our plate and it's our planet. Our choices stack up and making sustainable food choices really matters if we want to have a future. With this in mind, I settled on the phrase "Pick your plate, shape your planet". I decided that this was a simple and direct way of imparting the message that could easily be understood when glancing at a billboard or a social media advert. To illustrate this concept, I developed mockup visuals showing two plate-planet amalgamations. One was half a healthy, tasty looking plant-based salad comprised of leafy greens, chickpeas and beans (as these are an affordable non-animal protein source) and half a habitable looking planet earth, with lush green continents and blue seas. The other amalgamation was half a plate of beef steak and half a very firey, uninhabitable-looking version of planet earth. Typeface and colours were chosen in accordance with WWF's brand guidelines and a starry space background was chosen in order to make the text pop and help indicate that the two graphics were planets.
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Left: rudimentary animation showing how the ad might be displayed on a non-interactive digital billboard; right: mockup of poster in-situ
Top: storyboard for ad variation #2 , either screen 2.1 or 2.2. would be generated depending on which virtual plate is selected; bottom: mockup of how the posters might look in-situ before screens are activated
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To make the concept interactive in order to appeal to the young target audience and tie in with the strategic proposition of voting with your plate, I envisioned there being several variations of the advertisement, depending on the display medium. On a non-touchscreen / physically inaccessible billboard, the poster would be displayed as is, with an animation initially showing the two different plated meals and just the text "Pick your plate" visible. The corresponding healthy and unhealthy planets would gradually morph into view or be revealed by the plates spinning to one side to show the plates and planets side-by-side, followed by the planets completely morphing over the plates. As this is taking place, the "Shape your planet." text would generate onscreen underneath. Finally, underneath this, the call to action copy encouraging people to put into practice what they had learnt and "Take the #Eat4Change Challenge and see how you can make a world of difference" would appear, along with the slightly cheeky phrase "Let's give a fork about what we eat.", intended to put a humorous yet directive spin on the messaging to encourage and appeal to the younger target demographic. While there is not currently an official #Eat4Change Challenge, as part of this campaign, criteria and messaging around this challenge (for instance this could be going meat free for three days a week and uploading it to social media) would need to be developed on WWF's website and social media channels.
The second variation of this advertisement would be for media that can host limited levels of interaction, including touchscreen billboards that are accessible but tend to be passed quickly (for instance, successive poster boards on a subway escalator) and social media stories and adverts or website adverts. In this version, the audience is presented with the same two plates to pick from and is invited to use the touchscreen to select their plate preference. The selected plate would then come into centre view and depending on which plate is selected, would spin around to reveal either a healthy planet represented by blue seas, green land masses and sparkle graphics, or an unhealthy red planet which is being engulfed by flames. During this reveal, the billboard copy will shift to read "your planet in 2050", and below this, depending on the selection, text will read "if everyone in the world ate plant-based just three days a week, by 2050, we could reduce food-related emissions by 50%" or "if we all ate meat daily, by 2050, food-related emissions will have increased by 50% and our planet will be unliveable". After enough time has passed for this information to be read, the call to action screen would then be generated, which would again encourage people to take the #Eat4Change Challenge and "give a fork about what you eat". This sequence would be best suited to billboards viewed in succession while taking the escalator - once the touchscreen option was activated, the sequence would then be set in motion to be displayed on the next 3 - 4 billboards.
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Top L-R, middle L-R and bottom L: storyboard for ad variation #3; bottom middle: mockup of ad variation #3 in a shopping centre; bottom right: mockup of ad variation #3 on social media
The last variation of this campaign would be for an interactive billboard screen in an area where people are likely to linger, such as at a bus stop or inside of a shopping centre. It would also be suitable for a social media, mobile app or web advert and as an Instagram filter or TikTok or Snapchat lens. In this variation, the audience is again invited to "Pick their plate", however this time they are able to customise their plate to a greater extent. Underneath the copy they are shown an empty plate with a visual ingredients list that can be dragged and dropped onto the plate. There is also a search bar option to quick-add dishes or add ingredients that are not in the primary list. On social media, there would be the option to snap a photo of a real plate of food or upload a pre-existing photo. The photo will use AI to determine what the meal is. If this result is inaccurate, the user has the option to manually search for the dish in their photo. Once the dish/ assortment of ingredients has been selected, the plate will spin around to reveal a 'plate-net'. The visual will depend on the balance of sustainable versus unsustainable ingredients that have been selected and underneath, a bar will indicate whether global food emissions would be increased or reduced by 2050 if everyone ate in this way. Users have the option to share their plate-net on social media, invite others to generate their plate-net and share their email address with WWF in order to receive an #Eat4Change Challenge starter pack. This information would be included alongside the "Take the #Eat4Change Challenge" call to action message at the end of the advert. People who had given their emails but had not signed up for the #Eat4Change Challenge in the following week would receive two follow-up emails with the subject lines "Have you activated your plate yet?" and "What you eat could change the world - here's how" encouraging people to sign up for the challenge and access resources, recipes and support groups based around the challenge. I felt that giving people the opportunity to choose what was on their virtual plates and see the results would help them feel more empowered and likely to make sustainable food choices in real-life scenarios, equating what they put on their plate with more positive or negative outcomes for our world.
Results
As this was coursework for an online course attended by around 3,000 other people, I did not receive individualised feedback on my idea. However if this campaign was to actually run, it would be subject to evaluation, using key performance indicators to measure whether or not it achieved the campaign objective (to promote engagement and awareness in 11-12 million people predominantly aged 15-35). There are multiple ways that the campaign's success could be determined, including conversion/challenge sign-up rates and age group demographics, website visits, click through rates and social mentions of the challenge before, during and after the campaign. The reach, impressions and engagement rate on interactive social adverts could also be measured. For inaccessible non-interactive billboards, campaign success could be determined by calculating the average daily number of people - pedestrians or cars (daily effective circulations) - who were exposed to the advert against the number of website visits and challenge sign-ups.
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