Even though it sometimes feels like a long time has passed since the pandemic, COVID-19 is still impacting lives around the world in various ways. Not only medically: social distancing has had many consequences. One of the more unfortunate ones was university students around the world, who paid full tuition fees and expected a regular study course, but instead got only distant learning (if at all). These days a group claim is being organized in the UK exactly on that topic, and its organizers turned to us to create a video to help spread the message.
The challenge: Convincing the audience to participate
The object of the video was to let students from all over the UK know they might deserve compensation, and convince them that via this particular group claim, they can get it with zero hassle and zero cost. In other words, we had to tackle the heavy and alienating subject of filing a lawsuit in a way that would be engaging for young people. An additional challenge was how to appeal to a very wide audience in terms of gender and ethnicity - we don’t want to leave anyone out!
Luckily, we found one elegant solution which tackled both of these issues.
The solution: Animal characters as substitutes for people
We needed a leading character to represent the students, and we needed it to somehow be both male and female and of various different cultural backgrounds… Or maybe, not both but neither? Instead of human students, we ended up choosing an otter as our main character (and several other animals as supporting characters). It’s cute, it’s highly relatable, and it can represent anyone, anywhere.
Conclusion: A sweet, fun video that does the job
Placing our otter in human-like situations resulted in some very sweet moments, from seeing it in a zoom conference to having it pose as a lawyer in front of the court. The concept came to life with our team’s wonderful illustrations and animation, and we’re pleased to say the client loved the final video too! We wish them luck with their group claim and hope everyone gets the compensation they deserve.
