new earth

I chose palm oil because it has a close relation to my own interests in the social practice and that is injustice against minorities (BPOC).

Palm oil continues to be a problem for indigenous communities across the world from Africa to many parts in south east Asia. Large chunks of forests and land are being burned down to make space for palm oil plantations daily. This is a disaster for the inhabitants because their ancestral lands and forests are being destroyed along with many animals living there as well.
This is not only an issue related to the climate but also intersectional; a very pressing social injustice issue.

Currently there are a lot of organisations and movements focusing on pushing and finding alternatives for palm oil. The problem is that palm oil is still the cheapest and fastest in it’s field, and you can find it on almost any ingredient list in the supermarket.

My goal is to approach this from an advertisers perspective, and see if I can come up with a concept to support the movements pushing for substitutes financially.

What is Palm Oil?
Palm oil comes from the fruit of oil palms. Oil palms can grow wherever there are big amounts of rainfall and heat. Currently palm oil is globally produced and grown throughout Africa, Asia, North and South America.
Palm oil is one of the world's most popular edible vegetable oils, because of its low cost and large availability. It is a multi-billion dollar industry, and of big demand it continues to grow at the expense of our forests, climate, animals and actual humans and indigenous tribes

Why is Palm Oil Used?
Palm oil is the most widely used vegetable oil on the planet, (65% of all the different kinds of vegetable oils). It has many different properties and functions which makes it the most widely used vegetable oil..
It is semi-solid at room temperature, so can keep spreads spreadable (like Nutella, that contains it as well) it is resistant to oxidation, and so can give products a longer shelf life.. it is stable at high temperatures and has no color or smell, so does not change the look or smell of food products. It is mass-produced, and therefore cheap cheap cheap.

“When they take our land, leave our families to starve and violate our rights, we have no choice but to fight,” explained Rubenson Batuto, a member of the Higaonon tribe of Mindanao. “As an indigenous people, we have a right to our land, even if we have been denied it to this very day.”

The Flower Farm 'Margarine met een missie'
A dutch brand/company offering an alternative to baking and cooking without using palm oil. Margarine without palm oil has effect. A family of 4 uses on average more than 10 kilo’s palm oil. To produce 10 kilos of palm oil you need 30 square meters of the plantation so if everyone would substitute their butter and margarine used for cooking and baking with this brand you would already minimise the demand and production by a lot.

Concept:
ONE:

The first idea that popped up into my mind was to make use of this political climate. This new generation has proven themselves into being more online savvy and activist for a better future. The spread of information online is at it’s highest rate and the younger generation has a big impact on the rest of the world.

Organise: a MOVEMENT:
Modern Protest signs?
Making a playlist on Spotify to describe the movement ————>>

How can we activate the online generation to take this movement and run with it.. You have 2 ‘woke/big/current/hyped’ movements now: Black Lives Matter/Anti-Racism & Climate change movement.
The Palm Oil Plantations have a big impact on both of these movements.

Side ideas:
-Making a series of memes to raise awareness for the movement.
-Make a woke tik tok challenge
- Have accompanying young choirs singing the songs part of the protest board

PROTEST SIGN IDEA
CONCEPT ONE

CONCEPT TWO

On a random evening a few weeks back I noticed I received a message from someone I didn’t know. The message was a simple ‘Hi’ and when I went to his bio on instagram it said ‘Lonely man looking for sugar babies to spoil financially’.
It looked like a fake page and I didn’t respond but it got me thinking.
Before this I had been thinking of what target group would be the most efficient to get money from to donate to charities working hard to stop palm oil. The richest demographic is of course the straight white cis men. But the easiest to reach nowadays is of course the new generation. The message from a (supposedly) sugar daddy gave me the epiphany.
What strange connection between these two demograpics could I think of? In what aspect do the younger generation hold power over the older white men with money? Sugar babies. And dominatrixes. These women are in FINANCIAL power over the richest demographic.
A good example is of a campaign gone viral by the 20 years old Kayla Ward. She started selling her nudes to raise money for the Australian bush fires and made more than $1 million that went to Australian charities and evacuation centers, such as the Australian Red Cross and WWF.

My goal is simple

Get: The sugar babies of the online generation
To: use their power and connections with rich men
By: making them donate for good causes (like the movement against the use of palm oil)

And this way we tip the balance a bit back!

Why? An example: In Yemen there is one of the worst humanitarian crisis happening. The hunger kills millions of people and young kids. Jeff Bezos has a net worth of $165.2 billion, and Yemen only needs 4 billion to stop the hunger. He wouldn’t even miss it, so it angers me that most of the problems in the world are salvageable if only t he people with the most money were less greedy.

At first I really wanted to find a way to encourage sugar babies to ask their sugar daddies to donate literally. But I played around with the idea and it still seemed far fetched still so I thought I would try something a bit more autonomous and speculative than literal.
I took inspiration from this and what I want to do now is create a campaign around a ‘sexy’ hotline to donate while visually using the language that sugar babies use.

I made a poster idea for the campaign. It has just the right amount of information and very alternative Gen-z graphic design to activate curiosity without giving everything away. I like the outcome very much, I think it looks fierce and youthful, and it is an interesting way to raise money with a nod to such an empowering wave of youth interested in politics and making their ca$h.

Below this you can see some lovely mockups of the poster out and about.

The idea is that this campaign is a conversation piece, whilst trying to make raising awareness for this social and environmental issue something sexy and modern. I don't think it is strong to hold on its own but I imagine it to have a fully functioning texting system where you can donate thru text and this also hanging in hip cafes and clubs.

It would also have people working and answering the texts,
the next thing is important: The idea is that for every text (dollar) you donate you get a naughty text back. So it's a bit like paying for sexting, and getting money for it

These 'naughty' texts would also be incorporated with information on this movement and the current system.

amazing bus stop example!!

how it works:

Send a text and donate a dollar per text
For every text you get a sexier response
There are real people behind the responses
Have an exciting time and donate to finance the battle against palm oil at the same time!

thanks daddy!!!!!!!!

where does the money go to?

1. Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil
2. Palm Oil Innovation Group
3. Rainforest Rescue
4. Rainforest Action Network (RAN)
5. WWF
6. Orangutan Conservancy
7. Rainforest Trust
8. Palm Oil Action
9. Sumatran Orangutan Society (SOS)
10. Say No to Palm Oil

of every 1 dollar, it is split in 10 so each one of these organisations get 10 cents.

ESSAY

I started by doing research on things that were not very helpful and relevant. I insisted on doing something that impacted indigenous tribes and people of color to still incorporate my interest in cultural diversity. This made everything go very slow and I made it quite hard for myself. During the classes I had to work a lot and missed clarity on what to do. Eventually palm oil was suggested to me and I started researching it. What an impact this had! I chose this topic because the intersectionality of being it an environmental issue as well as a social issue intrigued me.

After my online research, documentaries and news articles on the impact of palm oil I went to the supermarket because I remembered seeing a butter brand that had ’no palm oil’ written all over it. This was called the flower farm and I looked them up online to gain some insight on where they come from and why they do what they do.

During my research I found out that almost all around the globe (except North America and Europe) indigenous tribes, inhabitants, rainforests, animals and the climate were all at jeopardy due to our excessive use for palm oil. Palm oil is the most popular since it is not only cheap but also odourless and colourless. It gives a product a longer shelf life and it is semi-solid at room temperature. All these qualities make it very hard to find a substitute. But there are substitutes! Some of these are: Coconut oil, Rapeseed oil, Sunflower oil and even fungi or yeast alternatives.

I made a quick mind map to give me some inspiration and I came up with a concept I wasn’t fully convinced by. I got stuck until I got a message from a ‘sugar daddy’. He messaged me out of the blue and told me he was looking for a ‘sugar baby to spoil’. This made me think of the article on the 20 year old Australian woman who sold her nudes to raise money for the Australian bush fires. I did a deep dive into the world of sugar babies and the financial power some of them have over these rich men struck me. It is perfect, because there is an unbalance which screams of racism and sexism. There are probably enough men willing to spare some money to get some attention. Why not make this campaign around sex?

I decided to build my concept around the very modern and digital language and way of activism that the new generations take part it.
There are more sugar daddies in Europe than I imagined (a quick look on seeking.com proved that)
I created a poster as a first of possible deliverables around the hypothetical working hotline campaign in which money is raised for the ten top organisations working against palm oil.

This would work well because it not only attracts two completely opposite demographics, with one being the richest demographic, but because sex still sells, and if you would be confronted with this number everywhere even I would be interested in trying it out because it is not only fun but you would feel less guilty about sexting with a stranger because it is for a charity right? If their wives would caught them they would even have an excuse.

This is not yet a fully functioning concept that could stand on it’s own but would probably need a launching campaign, online/offline and targeted marketing. But I think this is a very original and fresh way to look at things. It only makes sense that we should take some money back to tip the balance a little bit to our favour, right?

SOME SOURCES!

why palm oil is a problem - articles :

HOW DID PALM OIL BECOME SUCH A PROBLEM — AND WHAT CAN WE DO ABOUT IT?
https://ensia.com/features/how-did-palm-oil-become-such-a-problem-and-what-can-we-do-about-it/

Palm oil is unavoidable. Can it be sustainable?
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2018/12/palm-oil-products-borneo-africa-environment-impact/

indigenous lives impact :

Palm oil threatens indigenous life in Malaysia
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/08/palm-oil-threatens-indigenous-life-malaysia-180817060716266.html

Our ancestral land is worth more than palm oil
https://www.rainforest-rescue.org/petitions/915/our-ancestral-land-is-worth-more-than-palm-oil

Indonesia: Indigenous Peoples Losing Their Forests
https://www.hrw.org/news/2019/09/22/indonesia-indigenous-peoples-losing-their-forests

Palm oil and indigenous peoples in South East Asia
http://www.forestpeoples.org/sites/fpp/files/publication/2010/08/palmoilindigenouspeoplesoutheastasiafinalmceng_0.pdf

Palm Oil Controversies
The Abuse:
Indigenous Peoples' Rights
https://www.schusterinstituteinvestigations.org/palm-oil-controversies-indigenous-people

Alternatives:

https://www.cbi.eu/market-information/natural-ingredients-cosmetics/palm-oil-alternatives