This year's World Water Day, VCCP worked with Just a Drop to launch their biggest marketing campaign ever. ‘The Walk To The Well’ is a campaign to raise awareness of how a human’s potential to achieve in life is limited when they don’t have access to clean water. To emulate the length that communities in countries like Kenya, Zambia, India and Cambodia have to walk every single day, just to get access to water we have created the longest Twitter thread ever.
The Twitter thread tells the story of Ann’s daily walk to collect water and will challenge people to go on the journey with her by scrolling through. The thread takes about an hour to properly scroll through, with the intention being that many people won’t be able to complete it. If people decide to give up scrolling, they simply like the tweet at the point they’ve reached which will trigger an auto-reply showing the distance they’ve walked.
To learn more about the campaign, which was bsupported by celebrities including award-winning actor Stanley Tucci, actor and comedian Alexander Armstrong and TV presenter Gok Wan, we spoke to Laura Muse, Creative Director at VCCP.
What was the brief?
Raise awareness of the reality faced by people without access to safe drinking water at home and secondly, generate donations to help give those people their future’s back.
How did the initial pitch/brainstorming phase go?
The opportunity came to us after our CEO saw Fiona speak at a conference and following that, the work took 2 years to evolve due to several set-backs, including the global pandemic and small budget struggles.
What was the process behind ideating the concept?
As the charity operates differently to others, we knew we needed the work to take a different approach too. Unfortunately, the water crisis isn’t new news and it’s surrounded by clichéd storytelling.
We noticed though that, on average, we scroll around 2 km a day. So we decided to turn that into a challenge - getting people in the UK to experience a real woman’s walk.
What was the production process like?
To get something so beautiful and immersive for the limited budget was not easy. We were doing something that had never been done before, so we had to work out a lot of the hurdles ourselves. Like how high does the drone need to be to make the scroll long enough?
At the start we thought the scroll should be the exact distance Ann walks, but after a bit of maths (creatives doing maths!) we realised that would be hundreds of thousands of tweets. In the end, we realised we needed to get someone to go out to Kenya and meet up with the drone crew so we could help guide them.
The specifics of her daily experience that we got back from Ed Roe, our filmmaker, meeting her in person gave the story a much deeper, more meaningful level of detail and authenticity.
What was the biggest challenge during production? How did you overcome it?
Ann lived about a day’s drive from Nairobi, so production faced challenges even reaching her with mile after mile of unpaved, uneven roads. Our production vehicle broke down due to the rough terrain and was stranded for a few hours until a local mechanic from the nearest town could be found.
Aside from this, the sheer amount of assets we had to create was our largest obstacle. Everything we did, we had to do over 2000 times. Exporting images, cropping images, writing the story, designing the typography.
None of it could be automated because we wanted it to flow perfectly between posts. But, for all the hours it took us to make - we knew this was nothing compared to the work Ann has to do, every single day, just to get water.
What kit/tools/software were used to create the project
For the cameras we used a DJI Mavic Pro Drone and a Blackmagic Pocket Cinema 6K Pro. While for the software we used Adobe creative suite
What is one funny or notable thing that happened during production?
Ed was originally supposed to go out to Kenya with Brendan who works at Just A Drop. But unfortunately Brendan’s visa didn’t come through. The charity had been working with one of the communities there for a while, so locals from another village had organised a get together to mark the opening of a sand dam.
Without Brendan there to give a speech, the honour fell to Ed and despite being put on the spot, he did them proud.
What’s the main message of this project and why does it matter?
Billions of hours of human potential is being wasted because people have to walk hours to collect water. It’s time to end this and give them their future’s back.
How long did it take from inception to delivery?
It took two years.
What do you hope it achieves for the brand?
Our short-term goal is to raise enough donations to fund a sand dam near where Ann lives, but the long-term goal is to raise awareness of the crisis and the real change that Just a Drop can deliver through their sustainable, community-led approach.
Credit list for the work?
CAMPAIGN TITLE: The Walk To The Well
CLIENT: Just a Drop
ADVERTISING AGENCY: VCCP
CREATIVE DIRECTOR: Laura Muse
ASSOCIATE CREATIVE DIRECTOR: Aurelien Pakula
CREATIVE: Katharine Gritten
CREATIVE: Liv Amato-Pace
CREATIVE: Gemma Potts
DESIGNER: Jessica Steimer
SENIOR ACCOUNT MANAGER: Nicole Mouawad
ACCOUNT COORDINATOR: Ludo Curtis
SENIOR PLANNER: Mick Valentine & Lloyd Scott
AGENCY CREATIVE PRODUCERS: Poppy Tullo & Denise Odong
FILM MAKER: Ed Roe
PRODUCTION COMPANY: Girl & Bear
POST-PRODUCTION COMPANY: Girl & Bear
PR: Goodness PR
MEDIA AGENCY: VCCP Media
KENYAN FILM PRODUCTION : Click On
TECHNICAL PARTNER: GUUD TV
