The City of Austin Watershed Protection Department engaged us to create videos for their public education and outreach campaign. The goal was to create awareness about non-point source pollution that citizens inadvertently contribute to. Highlighting the current pollution-causing behavior and the benefits of new behavior drove our ideas.
We conducted stakeholder interviews with Austin Watershed Protection Department experts to understand current challenges and determine the key messages we needed to communicate within each PSA. Our challenge was calling out ecologically destructive behavior without making our audiences feel guilty or overwhelmed. So, we created charming, cheerful, animated stories illustrating the problem and behavioral shift in a fun, unexpected way. The video for Grow Green is a stop-motion animation with custom-knitted characters and scenes. The animation for Scoop-the-Poop has an over-the-top voice-over narration with off-beat characters that represent the most common polluting behaviors. The Pollution Hotline animation uses bright, undulating colors and a catchy call to action to help people remember the hotline number.
The campaign is still running, and the feedback from our clients and community is very positive. Our clients are using elements of our videos to extend the campaign into outdoor, digital, and print media.
