Sometimes it’s the smaller projects that push our creativity. This campaign micro-site, created for CPAWS in collaboration with Capulet Communications and others, had a simple job to do, but ended up doing it in a way we’re quite proud of.
Where We Started
The brief was rather simple, but also a tough nut to crack: a campaign microsite to turn out letters to provincial MLAs in support of new conservation legislation. The initiative itself is interesting: Indigenous-led conservation has proven one of the most effective tools in reducing the effects of climate change, and the proposed legislation would create more of these areas.
That’s well and good, and in BC support for environmental protection is strong. But it’s also a crowded space with many newsletters and microsites asking for attention and support. We turned out focus to finding a way to capture attention and turn that attention into action, all in a few seconds.
What We Did
When we saw some of the key art created for the campaign, we knew that the beautiful, dreamy illustration had to be the centrepiece. From that scene, we conceived a short animated progression that would draw people into the site and drop them right at the call to action, moving from emotion to clicks as quickly as possible.
Technically, we considered animating the scene in CSS, but decided to use a relatively new technique of scrubbing through a video element with scrolling. This method avoids video-autoplay and scroll-jacking mischief, and keeps people in control as they unveil the full scene by getting closer to the target area. Because video can be less than quick to load with tight bandwidth and mobile devices, we made several provisions for falling back to less rich interactions that still delivered a similar experience arc.
For sites like this, the space of a few seconds makes or breaks the chance to turn emotional and aesthetic reaction into a willingness to act.
The Results
The initial results of the campaign caused a small celebration: 68% conversion rate. As new audiences were engaged, that number levelled off in the 50s, producing hundreds of letters to MLAs in support of new, Indigenous-led conservation as part of BC’s climate change strategy.
CPAWS and Capulet continue to use the site with content modifications for related campaigns, making its effective life much longer than most microsites.