LEAP 4 (FEEDING BETTER FUTURES)
Infographic:
memes:
Reason for choosing campaign
In creating propaganda for my LEAP 4 project, I had decided to pick the campaign “Feeding Better Futures”, which was listed on https://www.dosomething.org/us/campaigns/feeding-better-futures/community . I specifically choose to do this project because of the cautiousness and awareness my mom had for food waste. I remember being a little kid and my mom always nagging me to finish everything on my plate. At the time I didn't understand why my mom would always pester me about the few pea’s or carrots left on the plate, but after doing extensive research, I understood why. The first reason, being that the chemicals in food waste, known as methane, contribute to global warming 34 times more than carbon dioxide (Edell, globalgreen). If that statistic doesn’t say enough in itself, imagine that more than 1/3 of food produced in the world goes to complete waste (Smith, National Geographic). For the saddest statistic is, that if we reduced food waste to even a quarter of the amount, we could end WORLD hunger.
Goals and strategies of the campaign
The main goal behind the campaign, “Feeding Better Futures”, is to raise awareness and help foster innovative ideas to actually help create change. The main strategy behind this campaign is the fact that people can legitimately innovate and create ideas to directly affect sustainable food and food waste. I think what gives this campaign potential, is that the organization isn’t asking for money or asking for you to spend money, but just to help contribute by giving us your ideas. As we realize world hunger, sustainable food, and global warming to be a collectivistic effort, we also understand the value of having diverse ideas and opinions. Through the submission of various videos by people of all ages, we represent a community for a better future. The target audience for this campaign is for anyone that understands and cares for the environment that we live in. At the same time, the audience understands the larger goal of the campaign to bring actual change into the world.
Production
In terms of the production process, I decided that doing a concise infographic and memes could help raise awareness for the campaign and cause. I chose to do an infographic to highlight certain aspects of the campaign and statistics that really stand out to people. For example, “Today, nearly 12% of the world's population are struggling with hunger. That includes 13 million kids and teenagers in America and and 2.5 million Canadians who live without secure access to food” (General Mills). I also strategized my information by the rule of three to help the ideas stick in people’s heads. Another reason why I did an infographic is to create a simple outline for others to follow. Particularly for a campaign trying to raise awareness about these issues, it’s important that people understand the overall concept and to be concise with it. Using Ryan Holiday’s tactic, “Make it about the headline”, I had to shorten my last phrase to make it bold enough to stand out, but also catchy. The purpose of doing this is to appeal to what Holiday calls the, “many online headlines exploit the so-called curiosity gap.” Throughout my infographic you can tell that I highlight specific words and make fonts bigger to stand out. For example, the incentive of the campaign is winning $50,000 dollars, which I highlight in green and capitalize the word ‘YOUR’ to let readers try to fill the details in between. I also tried to appeal to the essence and idea sustainable agriculture, by making the infographic primarily green and only highlighting the instructions in red, which stand for alert or importance. For my other piece of propaganda, I decided that doing memes would be a good way to try to raise awareness, while using some humor appeal. I also thought that it would incorporate well with our class on Twitter, as memes are one of the main functions within the social media platform.
Reflection
Reflecting on my campaign strategy, creating propaganda is not as easy as it looks. Especially considering that the type of content I’m doing is on the lower spectrum of production. For example, “From one second to the next”, is top tier production video due to the fact that every single aspect of the video is perfectly directed to capture emotion, provoke feeling, and accentuate their values. I believe that if I gave myself more time, producing a video would have been the most effective way to get the message across. Right below this I have posted a hyperlink to the video as a reference.
Work Cited:
Holiday, Ryan. Trust Me, I'm Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator (p. 106). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
Key facts on food loss and waste you should know! (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.fao.org/save-food/resources/keyfindings/en/
Newcomer, L. (2016, June 06). 29 Smart and Easy Tips to Reduce Food Waste. Retrieved from https://greatist.com/health/how-to-ways-reduce-food-waste
Votigo, Inc. (n.d.). Feeding Better Futures. Retrieved from http://www.feedingbetterfutures.com/
About Food Waste. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.moveforhunger.org/about-food-waste/
8 Facts to Know About Food Waste and Hunger. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://wfpusa.org/articles/8-facts-to-know-about-food-waste-and-hunger/
Food Waste Contributes to Greenhouse Gas Emissions More Than You Would Think! (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.globalgreen.org/blog/foodwasteequalsgreenhousegas
How Reducing Food Waste Could Ease Climate Change. (2016, May 24). Retrieved from https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2015/01/150122-food-waste-climate-change-hunger/