Around the campfire one night, an acquaintance told me of her exasperation that big corporations like Bayer and Monsanto are trying to quietly 'disappear' GMO labelling from food in the EU.
I explained that a whatsapp animation that can be forwarded and shared, would help get the word out.
She has a zero budget for fighting these things, so I offered to do the animation for free.
She was excited about the idea, and sent me lots of information, which I condensed into shorter copy to make sure the animation is kept short - it only needs to quickly impart the important info, and get people to click to read more, sign the petition and forward on to friends.
When having a zero budget, you've got to be smart in how you communicate and get the message out, so I particularly wanted the animation to encourage people to share it.
Note, that whatsapp has a limit of 5MB for files, which is like an average quality image (but this is an animation, so many images and a larger file), so it's important to keep the wording short = less reading time = shorter animation length (in seconds) = less compression and quality loss in the final file.
Unfortunately, another person who didn't understand the need to keep copy short was invited to review my German copy, and inevitably, many words were added - I made it work though.
When I started the project on August 11th, the petition had just under 5k signatures. By 21st August (10 days later) it had 86,000 signatures - it's now accelerated to about 10,000 signatures per hour!
Here's the english version of the animation, the final animation is delivered in German. I'm presenting an english language version here for maximum readability for my audience.
The Whatsapp message that goes out with this video says:
"🚨 GMO FOOD LABELS COULD DISAPPEAR 🚨
The EU wants to scrap the rule that tells us if food contains GMOs.
94% of people want labels to stay – but it could be too late unless we act NOW.
✍️ More info & sign here: www.artfuly.click/los
📢 Please forward to everyone who eats food!
& share to your social media to get the word out!"
Thre are slight differences because this german version has been refined more.
This is how the animation and message look when viewed in whatsapp - the intended delivery mechanism.
The link in the whatsapp message links readers through to this petition
Note - I can't be sure what part of these results is down to my efforts.
