Biodiversity for Resilience Video Series
Development and promotion of a micro-video series on the importance of biodiversity for creating resilient food systems
Project Snapshot
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Team & Timeline
April - August 2020
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Role: Video director, scriptwriter, social promotion and outreach
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Team: Videos edited by Alex Cahanap with Cohere in collaboration with Crop Trust communications team
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Problem
How might we strengthen this connection and convey the role of crop diversity in making our food systems more resilient?
Agrobiodiversity underpins nearly everything we eat and drink, yet few people understand what it is or how the diversity of crops and livestock contribute to what we find on our plates.
The Instagram story teaser developed for the micro-series
03
Overview
After the start of the pandemic, the idea of resiliency was top of mind. I was planning our content calendar with the Food Forever team and couldn’t stop coming back to the idea of resiliency. I thought we may be able to convey the fact that crop diversity contributes to agricultural resiliency by comparing it to the resiliency of our communities in the face of the deadly COVID-19 pandemic.
Diversity in thought, experiences, cultures, and perspectives makes us stronger as teams and communities. It's this diversity that enables us to bounce back from countless challenges. It's that way for our agriculture too, and I wanted to connect this idea to creatively convey the critical role crop and livestock diversity play in making our food systems more resilient. In the face of increasingly unpredictable climate changes, increased food demand, and a growing global population - resilient food systems have never been more important.
Protecting crop diversity - helps protect us too, and this idea was the inspiration for the video series.
I mapped out a five video micro-series, which began with the ongoing pandemic and took viewers to farmers’ fields, to seed banks, to chefs, and lastly to the tables and plates of individuals.
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Outcome & Impact
Each video in the micro-series was viewed thousands of times, generating thousands of impressions and receiving substantial traction on social media. This was the first time we had connected crop diversity to the diversity within our own communities and families where we live and work and the content performed substantially better than some of our previous videos or articles.
Watch the Series
How We Got There
Process
Making the Series
There was a different call to action for each video, and after drafting the scripts and getting them approved by our science team, I worked to list out the type of footage that should accompany each part of the text, pulling ideas from our own video collection and making notes where we would need to outsource stock footage. I then worked with Alex Cahanap and Chris Richards at Cohere, our contracted creative agency to piece it together. Working with Alex, I went through multiple rounds of edits for each video, swapping out photos and video, changing the music selection, and the speed of the text that appeared on the screen.
Sample Twitter Post
What makes us #resilient? What enables us to overcome hardships no matter the crisis? What is our greatest strength? ➡️ Diversity. In our food & agriculture. Get involved: croptrust.org/take-action#BiodiversityforResilience #foodforever #diversity @CropTrust @FoodForever2020
Marketing & Outreach
While the videos were being produced, I mapped out the various communications channels we could use and how we could work through our partners' marketing channels to expand the reach. While the videos were completed as a set, I phased out the launch of the videos, launching one each week with an accompanying social media campaign.
For each video, I created and shared a social media toolkit that included assets for sharing on social media and sample text to use with relevant hashtags and handles to our 50+ partner organizations worldwide.