Our social campaign for the World Food Programme hits home the vital issue of climate change to a Gen Z audience.
The climate crisis may be the greatest challenge faced by young people. Yet they are not always aware of how food security is impacted by climate extremes. The United Nations World Food Programme wanted to produce a digital video strategy that united Gen Z audiences around the world, so together they can fight climate-driven hunger. The film captures the spirit of activism prevalent in this generation. WFP recruited Hurricane to harness the creative power of filmmaking to tell one inspiring young man’s story. The brief was to also develop a digital video strategy that created a series of films and assets for paid and organic social media channels.
Creating a narrative for Gen Z
From the get-go, making the link between the climate and food security was essential to raising awareness of The World Food Programme’s work around the world. We knew that at the core of our digital video strategy was our target audience – Gen Z. But we also knew they disliked being sold corporate messages. Authenticity was going to be crucial here. We needed to give the campaign the voice of a young person and convey the message that they have inherited climate change, yet will be the ones to face the consequences.
Putting human stories first
At the heart of our campaign was an incredible young man called Abbas. We traveled to Chad, where 5.8 million people struggle to put food on the table. Here we met Abbas and captured the devastating effects of climate change on food security. We wanted to show who Abbas was beyond Chad’s food insecurity crisis – as an individual with dreams, ambitions, and incredible resilience. Highlighting these commonalities would be key to creating an emotional connection between this young person and our target audiences in developed countries
The campaign is built on the notion of ‘ownabilty’ and gives control to young people with a passionate call to arms. They have inherited the problem of climate change and food deprivation but now they can ‘Unite to Beat Hunger’.
We shared Abbas’ story in a way which was personal and unique, with powerful portraits set against the Chad landscape. To add even greater visual impact, we used distinct cinematography and bright motion graphics. The final effect cut through the noise of social media feeds giving the campaign an eye-catching visual identity. Finally, the campaign’s call to action was an Instagram filter, ensuring we effectively engaged with the target audience in a way that felt relevant to them.
The finished film highlighted the extreme conditions that lead to food insecurity as a result of climate change and the work that WFP does globally to combat world hunger in countries such as Chad through Abbas’ story.
The campaign greatly exceeded all targets across social media activation, but the biggest metric for success was seen in engagements, achieving 7000% over the KPI on paid activity with 2.3 million in total, within a reach of 18.8 million. Facebook followers increased by 765,000, Instagram followers 634,000.
If you’ve got a project in mind, or just want to have a chat, please get in touch
