OroVerde | Lucille Hein

bringing the

Congolese Rainforest to Bonn, Germany

Tuesday morning. Wake up. Get into yesterday's work clothes. Pour down a quick cup of coffee. The clock is ticking, there's no time for breakfast. Better get something along the way. Grab your things. Rush out of the house. Take the train to the city centre. Stomach rumbling before work. Now just grab a quick sandwich at the local coffee shop aaaand... there's a chimpanzee.

Why on earth is there a chimpanzee in my coffee shop???? And how come we're both trying to grab the same sandwich? Damn! He used my confusion to grab it and ran out of the door... - Now, what the hell was that??

Scenario:

Framework:

For its 30th anniversary the rainforest NGO OroVerde, local to the Bonn-Region in Germany, cooperated with students of RFH Köln to create and launch a multi-media awareness campaign across the entire inner city.
Taking on the role as the elected creative director and performance conceptor, Lucille Hein was responsible for a comprehensive conceptualization of a multimedia campaign as well as for ensuring that the visual output of her team's creatives features a congruent style while maintaining a high quality, professional production level.

Due to the available resources of the NGO, the campaign makes use of the concepts of word-of-mouth- and guerilla marketing, while being assisted through a social media campaign, micro-site and localized print media. Featuring several guerilla performances within the inner city over a time period of four weeks, the campaign commences at OroVerde's anniversary, celebrated at the town's annual city festival.

The performances are designed to generate awareness through the deliberate otherness between their rainforest-themed character and the everyday concrete-jungle life of the average population. After all, no one can lack attention and compassion if what usually lives on the other side of the planet now stops by for a visit right at your doorstep.

The proposed campaign was accepted by OroVerde and at large performed in real life.

join OroVerde's invitation for a

rainforest expedition at your doorstep

The general concept of the campaign follows the principle of inviting the average citizen of Bonn onto an expedition into the wild jungle, thus generating awareness through the contrast of experience to the usual live in the city.

For this purpose, all media created is distributed simultaneoulsy within key places in Bonn, such as banners at the central station,
displays and flyers within public transport and local businesses. Creating this on a tight budget was made possible through a co-operation with the city services.

The locally distributed media will be able to inform on its own, but additionally serve the larger purpose of informing about the upcoming events, campaign theme and OroVerde as a local organization. The interaction between different types of media is explained through the infographic on the right.

About the underlying concept:

gorilla marketing

"Gorilla marketing" is the introduction to the campaign, featuring a local performance in which people in animal costumes take over unexpected locations such as supermarkets, pharmacies and public transport while interacting with citizens in a playful manner.

The prototyped performances are designed with both a tight financial budget and the potential for longjevity through word-of-mouth marketing in mind. Because of Bonn being a small city, it is usually not known for out-of-the-box experiences. As such, performances are intended to be unique experiences that locals would want to talk about and share with their friends.

All expeditions are repeatable and scalable by design, offering OroVerde the opportunity to enact them with varying amounts of effort depending on resource availability, while being re-useable at later occasions as well.

Lucille and her team prototyped three of these expeditions, presented left and below. To keep the interest in the campaign fresh at all times, the contents of these differ largely, while the overall aesthetics and concept tie them together.
For the performances Lucille took on the role as a conceptor, developing the different ideas and storyboards for each expedition, while overseeing the lead visual creation in film and VFX as the creative director.

deep in the concrete jungle

rainforest relaxation

"deep in the concrete jungle" takes the expedition theme to a next level and sprinkles a hint of safari into it. Designed as a treasure-hunt that banks on the mechanism of games like geo-caching, participants get to follow hints such as footsteps and sounds to track down a variety of exotic rainforest animals that have hidden within several locations spread across the inner city of Bonn.

"rainforest relaxation" is a spatial installation within public areas, that allows people to escape the busy city-madness through compelling and relaxing visual and auditive ambiance. It is best presented within malls, at fairs or along high streets.

a summary of the

additional campaign material

web media

This media is featured in a separate section, as Lucille was not involved in the creation and visual design of them, but exclusively in the concept development. Viewing them in addition to the earlier shown media offers a congruent campaign perspective and summary of Lucille's work as the elected Creative Director.

The material is split into two sections.

"Web media" shows screendesigns of the landing page and mockups for the social media campaign.

"Localized media" presents print media such as banners, city-lights, swinging cards and postcards and digital media such as screen displays, all of which are exclusively presented within the inner city of Bonn.

About the presented media: