Greenpeace – Tesco Destroys Forests campaign
Overview
In the last two years, the focus of the GDES4005 Module has been on Graphic design for sustainable change, and communication campaigns concerning sustainability.
The Module aims to provide opportunities for the integration of different approaches and methods in order to produce creative responses targeted to different issues and audiences. Students develop the ability to work in small teams, and deliver projects from briefing through to final delivery in a professional way, considering an appropriate level of execution and presentation.
The live brief is brought by an external client, and this year the students worked for Greenpeace’s “Tesco Destroys Forests campaign” – on the subject of Greenpeace’s long-standing battle for protection and restorations of forests. The Amazon and other South American forests are under threat and one of the biggest causes of deforestation is industrial meat. In this context, Tesco is one of the responsible companies for forest destruction. Tesco is the UK’s largest supermarket selling meat produced by JBS, Brazil-based global meat giant notorious for its role in deforestation, land grabbing, and human rights violations across South America.
The campaign aims to inform the general public, to apply maximum pressure on Tesco to change their meat supply chains, and create reputational damage to the brand, with the hope to persuade them to take positive action (Tesco promised to get deforestation out of their supply chain by 2020 but have failed).
One of the deliverables was an industry-style ‘pitch’ presentation where students had to present their final outcomes of the campaign to Greenpeace staff, tutors, and their peers. This was a fantastic opportunity for students to collectively communicate their ideas and concepts to the client and receive real-life feedback regarding their proposals.
Students had to work in small teams and produce a creative response to the Tesco campaign brief. The design had to address the deforestation problem caused by meat production in an attention-grabbing campaign calling for Tesco to drop meat suppliers.
Students had to develop a toolkit campaign for Greenpeace to include:
● A campaign tagline, key message, and CTA
● Campaign look and feel elements: color scheme and typography
● Printed media: poster
● Online media: social media posts or short animation
● ‘Brand attack’: guerilla-style activities, ideas for subvertising and attacking the brand, to capture public attention and engagement.
Top 3 highlights of the project
● Working for a live brief brought by an external client
● Teamwork and managing effective collaboration
● Finding creative ways to approach a challenging brief project
Feedback from the client:
Greenpeace enjoyed the opportunity of working with the students and going through the process with the academic members of staff.
Students’ work has been shared with the Greenpeace team who is looking into the possibility of using some of the proposed materials for the campaign.
Project Lead: Noemi Caruso, Graphic Design Lecturer
Academic Year 2021 / 2022
Live Industry project developed for GDES4005 Design Process: Context, Communication and Audience Module