Since the early 2000s, Woolworths, South Africa’s largest retailer, has been on a journey to steadily convert its production to a more sustainable model. While their efforts cover all parts of their business, one program that is key to sustainability is called Farming For The Future: a multi-pronged strategy to improve the ecological balance in their supplier farms by reducing their carbon impact, improving biodiversity, and saving water. Woolworths wanted to communicate these efforts in a way that allowed more detail and interactivity for the viewer.

Their internal team put together a multi-channel campaign centered around a web app that could provide information on four of the main Farming For The Future pillars. The key visual was headed “This Apple Can Save The World,” a reference to how sustainable farming practices could both provide ever more food while doing less damage to the environment and used the image of an apple that would sprout various environments on its surface to represent a mini Earth that could be explored.  Creatively, the team provided in-depth references for the visual style, as well as scripts for the various social media videos and the web app…  and then handed us the baton.

Says Director, Chris Lockhart:

“The turnaround time was tight, so we worked directly with the app developers at Method Lab, to regularly provide time-accurate WIP video for the development of the app in tandem with our animation production. The final result was four and a half minutes of animation for the web app, plus multiple extra shots of the main apple environment and various unique edits for general awareness. With the agency’s guidance, a beautiful soundtrack from Hannes Burger, and the dev skills of Method Lab, we managed to produce a campaign that immediately exceeded the client’s expectations for reach and engagement and continues to pass the message on.”

Hannes De Wet

Creative Director - Woolworths, Cape Town

 

We could not have done this without you. Your creative interpretation, the complexities of the challenge, the quality and quantity of the output, managing and syncing of the timelines and processes, reviews, collaboration (…) All of it would not have been possible without you – all the while under compressed and constrained conditions (…)

But more importantly, we know from preliminary statistics that the reach, open rates, and engagement rates of the main experience have already done its job better than could have been hoped for. People are actually opening it. They are actually going through it. They are actually spending time in it. And they are actually commenting (good and bad), which means they are thinking.

Agency: Woolworths Agency, Producer: Julie Gardiner, Marketing Manager: Christy Oliver, Creative Director: Hannes De Wet, Art Director: Robert Prinsloo, Copywriter: Mimi Thurgood.Produced by Masters & Savant, Producer: Alise Antrobus, Director: Chris Lockhart, Storyboard: Gerhard Human, 3D Animators: Sean Frawley, JP Castel, Charl Engelbrecht, Gerbrand Nel, 2D Animation: Gerhard Human, Edwin de Swardt, Chris Lockhart, Compositing: Edwin de Swardt, Edit: Edwin de Swardt, Chris Lockhart, Eunice Pieterse.

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