Veganuary
The brief
In Late September 2021, we were commissioned by Andrew Jolly, Video and Creative Manager for Veganuary, to produce the official Veganuary campaign ad for 2022.
The ad was to be aired during the Christmas and New Year period, before that season’s blockbusters, in cinemas across the UK.
The aim of the 60 second film is to encourage people to try going vegan for the month of January.
The brief centred on a Bigfoot character who wants to lower his carbon footprint and in doing so, decides to take the Veganuary challenge.
The process
Along with the client, we helped develop the script, introducing a new character, a cheeky little rabbit that becomes Bigfoot's sidekick.
Based on the client's original sketches, our designer on this project, Maria Samaniego, created some wonderfully characterful designs for Bigfoot. From the first sketches, right through to the finished design, we could see that he was going to be a joy to animate!
From the splendid isolation of the mountains in the opening shot, to the atmospheric, firelit, woodland clearing where Bigfoot lives, the backgrounds perfectly capture the feel of the North American environment.
Over an 11-week period, a team of 8 animators had great fun bringing the characters to life.
Bespoke music was composed for the film by Nice Sound’s Max Brodie. His choice of banjo as the lead instrument gave exactly the kind of warm and friendly feel we wanted for the film.
We had a tight 11 week production period, from sign off on the script to delivery of the final versions of the film in English, German, Portuguese and Spanish
We found out, in the last week of production, that the client had managed to secure the wonderful actor James Cromwell (The Green Mile, Babe, Succession) to voice Bigfoot. His warm and charming performance was the cherry on the (vegan) cake!
The team
The film was produced and directed by Claire Grey.
Character design was by Maria Samaniego
Backgrounds were created by Devon Short.
The team of animators included:
Claire Grey, Devon Short, Rustis Balciunas, Emilia Schneider, Sam Jones, Chris Cocker, Pypah Santos
Special FX flame animation was provided by Bee Joy
Music and audio design were created by Max Brodie from Nice Sound.
Compositing was by Jon Turner and Sean Jones.
Postproduction was by Boardwalk Studio.
Client relations
From day one, Veganuary’s Andrew Jolly was just a fantastic client to work with. He and the Veganuary team had strong ideas as to how the main character should look and Andrew was instrumental in achieving the final look for Bigfoot.
Throughout the production we kept Andrew and his team informed at all times, with staged presentations showing the development of the characters and backgrounds.
Once the animatic was signed off, the progression of the animation was shown by dropping in completed scenes as they were ready.
Feedback from Andrew was speedy and concise, enabling the production pipeline to flow seamlessly, so even though the schedule was tight, it enabled us to add extra little flourishes here and there.
The video achieved 231,463 views on Veganuary’s Instagram channels, 109,452 views on Youtube, 19,779 views on Twitter, 4,181 views on Linkedin, 163,465 views on Facebook, 66,198 views through ad streaming in the US, and was shown to 165,533 attendees at cinemas, resulting in a verified 760,071 views globally.
Press highlights include being featured as Campaign Magazine’s Ad of the day, a feature in the print & online versions of the Observer on 26 Dec, and online in The Grocer, Retail Times, Ad Week, Sky News and The Drum.
As a direct result of this campaign, we saw a record breaking 706,965 people sign up to take part in Veganuary in 2022* (up 8% YoY with a similar total campaign budget and no cinema ad). This increased to 1.8 million in January 2024. In terms of environmental impact, because more than 600,000 people ate vegan for 31 days (as we achieved through sign ups): we saved 62,304 tonnes (62,304,000kg) of CO2eq, equivalent to 716,000 flights from London to Paris, 243 tonnes of PO43-eq (eutrophication), the same as 987 tonnes of sewage spared from waterways, 3.7 million litres of water and 2 million animals were spared from a lifetime of suffering. So while Bigfoot may be a mythical creature, through this ad and resulting campaign, his positive impact on climate change is very real.
*Source WAF https://worldanimalfoundation.org/advocate/vegetarian-statistics/