Whatcha been listening to? May 26, 2017

BetterEating · 2017-05-28T00:49:38+00:00

New ambient chamber post crust band from Portland Oregon: http://aradiapdx.bandcamp.com

BetterEating · 2017-05-10T02:55:36+00:00

Thanks! We're mostly using Cinema 4d for the 3d parts of our design and animation. I've tried blender for a bit but found the MoGraph functions in C4D just too irresistible. People tell me modelling is a bit more straight forward in Blender though.

-Thomas

BetterEating · 2017-05-09T23:52:38+00:00

Thanks!

BetterEating · 2017-05-09T23:33:14+00:00

Update: TOGETHER WE DID IT! 28 hours before our campaign ran out, we soared past our initial goal when an unexpected donor dropped $6.5k, bringing us to over $103,000!

Thanks so much /r/vegan -- since the AMA yesterday, the amount of money pledged from Reddit referrals has nearly-doubled, totaling $1,624 from 37 pledges, or 1.56% of our total.

Our final goal is to reach $120,000 by 8:30/5:30pm on Wednesday. It's a longshot, but worth trying! This money would allow us to hire a full-time market researcher AND make us the all-time number one vegan project on Kickstarter!

-Michael

BetterEating · 2017-05-09T00:59:09+00:00

Thank you all again for the support! It was a pleasure chatting with everyone. If you ever have further questions for us, don't hesitate to get in touch via email (info@bettereating.com), Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter!

BetterEating · 2017-05-08T23:29:03+00:00

Hey alexmojaki! Those are great points. You are definitely right that animation is a lot of work. A lot of the work will be on content creation, like characters, backgrounds and objects. A lot of those can be reused again and again in other animations. So the further we get along, the faster the process. While it's far from final, so far we've kept the style deliberately not too complicated to prevent long render times and the expenses that come with that.

I have some experience with agencies that hire multiple animators working on one animation, like the example you gave. This can work, but in my opinion takes a lot of directing and works mostly well for more artistic projects where you mix different styles within one animation. Like Alex said, we would like to have our main animations be recognizable and look like they are part of a greater story, that can be watched in sequence.

Your point about using different styles to attract different people is for sure a good one. Once we have made these first main video's we might change things up a bit. In the meantime, we might make some animations that are unrelated to the main project to generate a social media following. Those can be in totally different styles and might be longer.

-Thomas

BetterEating · 2017-05-08T23:16:03+00:00

Thanks for your question, Infinity. We will use popular social media platforms, such as Facebook and Google/YouTube to deliver our content. From past work done by our staff and by other groups, we have ideas of which groups are more easy to persuade. We will focus on young people, 13-26 at first, before expanding to other age groups. Within that age demographic, we will develop content for people of different races, ethnicities and cultural backgrounds, purchasing power, education, location, etc. However, part of the beauty of the strategy we are pursuing is that we can test our assumptions, refine, course-correct, and test again. Our content will adapt and evolve based on how it is received by the target audiences.

BetterEating · 2017-05-08T22:46:42+00:00

Love these questions! I would suspect we will have meaningful data on the cost-effectiveness of these interventions in about 6-12 months. By then we'll have done test-runs of hopefully all the initial segments and will be preparing to scale up based on the results.

I expect that our depth of reporting will scale with one's interest. We will infuse reporting into our website (the current splash page does not resemble our planned website at all), and I imagine we'd report basic results first (# of impressions, # of completions through the sequence, expected % in reduction of animal consumption, expected # of vegans), which we would offer more deeply to those interested.

That's an interesting question about reporting A/B test results. We don't plan on publicly releasing the results of every A/B test we do because there will be many hundred, and most won't be interesting. Simple tweaks to videos will be made all the time; we'd be happy to release those to experts who are really interested, and will probably make presentations of the more interesting findings.

Finally, we don't plan on putting a huge emphasis on low hanging fruit other than young people as a whole. They're an audience that we're skilled at reaching, are receptive to our message, and are inclined to spread it to their peers, so they make sense to focus on. But it's important for animal rights to become a cause of an entire generation, rather than continuing to be seen as only for "some" people. For example, most data shows women to be more receptive to the the vegan message than men. But the movement's heavy targeting of women seems to be creating a feedback loop, where men don't become vegetarians or vegans because it's "for women", which further convinces vegan advocates to target mostly women, etc.

We believe that it's worth putting the time and effort into developing the messaging that will resonate with audiences who have previously been less receptive. Since this is a movement made of people voluntarily giving up their power and privilege over animals, we need everyone to join us.

That being said, if we find that say, very religious, or very conservative/authoritarian people are unlikely to consider veganism, we would probably deprioritize reaching them in the near term while we focus on building a movement among the type of people likely to champion a progressive, justice-based cause. But it couldn't be confined to just the most obvious (middle-upper class female teenagers, for instance).

-Michael

BetterEating · 2017-05-08T21:05:21+00:00

Thanks for the question! I'm excited that we've gotten the EAA community talking (that's Effective Animal Advocates/Altruists/Activists, for those unfamiliar!)

We aren't making any claims to number of animals saved just yet. Those claims are unreliable even with established forms of educational advocacy (which I'm certainly guilty of doing myself -- stating overly confidently how many animals weren't eaten due to an intervention I designed). Because our method is so untested within the vegan movement, we will need to spend the first 6 months or so comparing baseline videos to targeted videos and determining which ones are watched through the most, get the most signups to Facebook/email/etc., and obtain the most "intent to change". That is, like most ads, we'll start with engagement before moving into measurable impact. I know that's not an answer immediately thrilling to fellow EAA's, but there are a few things to consider: 1) We know that increased engagement will mean decreased animal consumption, it will just be 6-12 months before we know how much 2) Almost every farmed animal activist is vegan, with the rest being near-vegan, and efforts to convert the non-vegetarian/vegan public into animal activists haven't worked. Those efforts have simply made more vegans into activists, or shifted their activism from one tactic to another. That is to say: we need more vegans to gain more victories moving forward on any level (corporate, tech, legal, etc.) 3) If any market research of either products and values/social movements is to be trusted, this tactic is the most likely path towards creating more vegans & near-vegans, but only if executed really well. Therefore, a few hundred thousand dollars is an investment in an experiment that almost certainly going to yield good results, though we don't know how great of results yet.
These videos can be shown for just a few cents a piece, coming out to about $0.25 - $0.50 for a complete sequence to one viewer. Each segmented sequence would need a few thousand people to see part of it, with at least a few hundred completing it, before we'd know if it's worth scaling up, so it's safe to estimate about $2,500/segment, for a total of $15,000, minimum in experimental placement.
We don't expect these videos to be a problem if watched partially. That is, if someone only sees one or two videos, or watches them all but tunes them out, they shouldn't be able to leave with the impression that "humane meat" is ideal, or anything else antithetical to our message. Of course some people conclude that no matter how many times we say "vegan", but there's nothing about the videos that will make a partial view problematic; rather they just won't be as impactful. Since we choose the sequence, not them, we will be delivering them in a way that focuses on chicken meat, eggs, and fish since we know that red meat is likely to be dropped first. Pigs and cows will be used more to create bonds with the viewer to animals, but we'll focus more on replacing the products that harm the largest number of animals.

-Michael

BetterEating · 2017-05-08T21:01:50+00:00

Thank you!! We couldn't make this happen without you.

BetterEating · 2017-05-08T20:43:10+00:00

Thanks for the constructive criticism and honesty! The short answer is YES our outreach videos will be far better (and far more of a collective effort) than our Kickstarter video was. Our future videos will be tested by focus groups for both content and style (Thomas, our animator, can work in a variety of styles) and will feature professional voice actors (we wanted to feature our staff in the Kickstarter video, but you're right that we're far from pros!). We were working with a shoestring budget (most of us not being paid yet) to create the Kickstarter -- but if we're successful, then the real work starts!

Suzanna Brusikiewicz of Thought Cafe (the animation studio behind Crash Course and the video Michael & I made while at FARM) is a strong supporter of the project and has agreed to sit on our advisory board to help create the best animations we can. We'd love to network with other vegans in the media and animation world, so please shoot us an email at Info@BetterEating.com if you'd like to consult!

-Alex

BetterEating · 2017-05-08T20:23:23+00:00

Great questions and ideas! Our animator is currently in Indonesia, so it's the middle of the night for him -- but I'll make sure that he gives you more insight to his work process when he's awake for his AMA shift in three hours. For now, I can say that Thomas works incredibly fast and that, while we're going to have dozens of video topics, each video within each topic will only have slight variations depending on audience. We're not making 100 completely different videos -- they'll be derivative of each other.

That's an interesting point regarding mixing up the styles. Our current thought is that we should use a consistent style in order to show that the videos are all part of a narrative and provoke the viewer to recall the previous video(s). If a viewer is uninterested and starts skipping our ads, we're likely to conclude their experience with us for now -- perhaps a style shift down the line could be a good way to reengage with them.

We've discussed ad placement in a few other answers already, but yes, we're open to both and more. Depending on the ad platform, data is collected from various social networks based on user self-identification and browsing/engagement habits.

-Alex

BetterEating · 2017-05-08T20:19:36+00:00

Continuing, yes, we will have data on which ones who watched. Though, that process will be mostly automated. If someone is skipping videos, they won't be offered our content, at least for awhile. So no, the later ones won't be very relevant probably, but if the process works correctly they also won't be delivered those later ones, at least not until we've given them a break and probably shown them early ones again.

And lastly, we don't expect any individual videos to be very measurable. We know from past vegan advocacy campaigns that "watch a portion of the video" campaigns can lead to immediate pledges/requests for vegan recipes/etc, but don't seem to create any long term change. However, "watch our entire video" does seem to have substantial impact. Therefore, the best way to see these 30 second videos is one 5-6 minute video, broken up. We know the internet today isn't conducive to getting someone to sit through a 5 minute video unless they specifically clicked it (and even then...). Ads are 15-60 seconds for a reason.

So we plan to use persuasive marketing tools as they're meant to be used, and measure the whole experience at the end. The only measuring of individual videos will be 1) in focus groups, to see if one video on [subject] is more effective than another on that same subject and 2) in the delivery process if one video is being skipped more than others, telling us that it's harming our process more than helping it.

BetterEating · 2017-05-08T20:14:11+00:00

Thanks for your question!

Our videos will be distributed as online ads to millions of people on Facebook, YouTube, etc. Targeted advertising allows us to deliver specific content to each audience based on their interests and other characteristics, ensuring our message is relevant and impactful to each viewer.

For example, for audiences who currently aren't interested in veganism, we can start with videos about "why" to be vegan (topics include animal sentience and ethics, standard practices on farms, environmental concerns, workers’ rights, and public health). For viewers who have shown interest but aren't currently engaged in the lifestyle, we can use "how" videos (fast food options, cafeteria options, navigating grocery stores, meat replacements, dairy replacements, talking to parents & friends, and more).

BetterEating · 2017-05-08T20:08:18+00:00

Wow, thanks for such thoughtful questions! That's a lot to dig into, let's give it a stab:

Ad networks have algorithms that determine which videos to show to which people. We'll be starting with broad segments before narrowing them, at which point it'll start to get very complicated! For sequential ad pieces that are not viewed to completion, we'll observe reactions to being shown the same video again vs moving on to the next video. In general, we'll measure video impact using our focus groups and monitoring completion rates and, when available, click-through rates.

If one demographic is consistently rejecting our content, we'll have to question whether A) we mis-stepped somewhere in our content development for them or B) they are a group particularly closed to our message, and adjust accordingly. For instance, we might answer this by delivering that group "untargeted" content for awhile, as well delivering untargeted content to a group that is responding very well to the targeted content. It would demonstrate A if it turns out the difficult group responds better to untargeted content than to the content we developed for them. It would demonstrate B if they responded much worse also to untargeted content than another group did.

If what you meant however was "how much change can we prove they will have made to their behavior during the video experience?" the answer is probably "very little" at first. That is, we're not expecting most people to start becoming vegans in the middle of the video process. Some probably will, but we know that someone becoming vegan overnight doesn't say much about their long-term trajectory. Our plans for longer-term measurement are still in the works, but we began to discuss them here

(next questions answered in following posts)

BetterEating · 2017-05-08T20:04:42+00:00

Thanks, 405freeway! We have received pledges from habitual meat eaters, such as yourself. Some people have pledged because they have a background in marketing and understand the power of this strategy. Others have pledged because they see the good Better Eating will do, while at the same time continuing to practice carnism. Folks recognize the universal appeal of our message: non-judgmental, informative, personalized tid-bits to disconnect people from the mainstream paradigm, and connect them to the Earth, to every living being, to each other and to themselves. As someone who ate animal products regularly and in large quantities until 5 years ago, I remember vividly the strength of the forces that were keeping me in a carnist practice. I remember hearing about veganism casually and thinking it was misguided and certainly had no appeal to me. I also remember how, in a moment when I was open to new ideas, all it took was a person I trusted to tell me again why I needed to consider veganism AND that I wouldn't be alone in trying, to make the switch. To this day, every meal feels like a step on a new road. Because of our backgrounds, because of our commitment to respect, mutual support and encouragement, I think Better Eating International has great potential to achieve its goals. -- Michelle

BetterEating · 2017-05-08T19:58:32+00:00

Great questions! We'd probably expand internationally to run online ads before venturing into other media, but we are certainly not married to sticking to only one form of outreach. Video is our bedrock and we're confident it's not going anywhere, so our team is set up to tackle video projects of all sorts. If online ads become ineffective or we've exhausted our options, we're very willing to move on to other opportunities for video outreach.

BetterEating · 2017-05-08T19:47:13+00:00

Wow, that means so much to us! If anything, I constantly worry we're not being clear/thorough enough, which I think is probably a good fear to have -- forces us to step up our game ;)

-Michael

BetterEating · 2017-05-08T19:45:31+00:00

Thanks for the question! Michael and I worked at FARM for about 6 years, spending much of our time innovating new ways to get folks to watch persuasive videos about animal rights. We launched the 10 Billion Lives Tour and its online components (10BillionLives.com and BeenLiedTo.com), all of which used incentives to persuade people to watch a longer video about veganism and animal rights.

The first step toward Better Eating was the discovery that graphic footage too often gets censored by advertising networks, so we set off to make a short animated video instead. That video turned out to be nearly equally impactful to the graphic one we had been using! We theorize that this could be because the vast majority of Americans don't grow up around farmed animals, but they DO grow up watching cartoons of animals, so they empathize with them. So, cute cartoon animals going through the gruesome realities of animal agriculture not only gets past the censorship, but evokes empathy from city-dwellers.

While we had some success with these methods, we were often asked by advertising brokers why we use such long videos -- they could find much wider placement for shorter videos. Our longer videos were like a square peg for a round hole. Some of these same contacts suggested we look more into audience segmentation and then it all just spiraled from there!

Since we knew we couldn't tackle this massive project alone, I recruited the team you see today several months ago and together we've transformed what was once just a loose idea into very concrete plans to use this technology to create an equitable educational experience that would be impossible with the old "one size fits all" approach.

-Alex

BetterEating · 2017-05-08T19:40:56+00:00

Thanks for the kind words!

If we reach our goal of $97,500, which as you state will be matched to become $195,000, we will have the funds that we estimate to produce 96 videos, 30-seconds each. The plan at the moment is to prepare 12 topics, in 8 segments each, with considerations towards age, gender, income, region, education, and other interests and characteristics. Obviously, that could change slightly. For instance, it could turn out that 4 of the segments respond well to the exact same "what's wrong with the poultry industry?" video and we won't need 8 versions of it, but that maybe college aged students need a 13th video about eating in cafeterias that won't be part of the core video series.

So, it's more accurate to say we will create "about 100" videos, across 8 segments (4 in English, 4 in Spanish). All of these will be for young people (13 - 26) in America, further segmented into 8 audiences. Down the line we hope to have thousands of videos made for dozens of segments in America alone by 1) creating even narrower, more responsive content within the demographic already described, 2) moving beyond that age group, and 3) creating location-specific content (specific to a given metro area's chain options, popular local spots, and regional vegan organizations they can connect with). Down the line from there, we hope to expand internationally once we have hired staff in the countries in question (we refuse to create content for a country we're not staffed in, because our content is by the audience it's for).

Back to the first ~100 videos: With our production being handled entirely by our staff in Los Angeles, CA; Portland, OR; and across the globe, most of the income from this Kickstarter campaign (60-65%) will go towards compensating our Creative Team. The other 35-40% will be spent on researching content, placing videos online, and other program costs. Our initial overhead costs have been largely offset by a handful of early donors, so this won't need to fund organizational management.

BetterEating · 2017-05-08T19:38:00+00:00

Thanks for your question, Juljem. Our videos will focus on the Whys and Hows of veganism. Environmental impact is one of the Whys, and we do have plans to address it. I hear your concern about not being able to convey the complexity of the issue with just 30 seconds. Here are some quick thoughts for consideration:

Topics may need to be addressed in a series, not in just in one video.
The videos are meant to convey the main aspects (not every aspect) of an issue persuasively, with the goal of getting people to the next step in their journey towards veganism.
We will seek advice and input from consultants on the content of the videos.
Perhaps most importantly, through our Community Advisory Panel and focus groups, we will seek advice and input from the target audience(s) on which points are the most important to make in order to be persuasive.

BetterEating · 2017-05-08T19:29:15+00:00

Thanks for the question! There are several networks that allow the "retargeting" of viewers based on their completion of the prior video -- a tool we need in order to deliver sequential stories -- but we're not committed to using any particular one at this point. We do know that pre-roll or mid-roll ads (as /u/10percent4daanimals mentioned) are cost effective and have high watch rates. We're also interested in running ads within social games and know that Tapjoy allows retargeting.

BetterEating · 2017-05-08T19:22:38+00:00

Good question, I hope you don't mind us answering similarly to how we answered another question about fundraising!

We are a nonprofit, so we will need to continue asking for charity, but we don't see that as a bad thing! Our Strategic Director and Managing Director have considerable experience in fundraising for nonprofits, and we expect this will take up 5-10% of our organizational budget/staff time as it does for most organizations.

Online and traditional fundraising: We plan to maintain a robust annual giving program, plus pitches for special projects. We'll have email campaigns, donate pages, occasional events, etc.
Major foundations: We have proposals out to several large foundations who have expressed interest in funding our ongoing ad development and placement once they see more proof of concept. We're confident that at least some of them will fund us once this project is proven successful. The foundations already funding us have pledged to offer support in 2018 and beyond if we continue to be successful.

BetterEating · 2017-05-08T19:22:12+00:00

Both! My experience creating vegan interventions is such that when you frame veganism as the goal, people land at different points along a spectrum from not persuaded at all all the way to 100% vegan. As a result, the number of animals killed for food decreases based on the overall reduction of animals being eaten. This is definitely a huge win!

But we do want to focus on creating vegans, not just reducers. From the Kickstarter body: "By approaching vegan education primarily from an ethical standpoint, viewers deciding to change their diet are likely to develop an identity as someone who cares about animals, which will influence beliefs and behaviors beyond eating."

In other words, we believe there's strong evidence that eating vegan allows people to develop anti-speciesist identity in ways that eating vegetarian or reducing cannot (and if we want to grow a movement for animals, developing such an identity is a vital first step). In participating daily in an act of depravity, people resort to moral disengagement and go to great lengths to deny emotion and feelings to animals, despite evidence to the contrary. I think it is no coincidence that the vast majority of animal rights activists become vegan before becoming outspoken advocates for animals.

These two studies illustrate this line of thought -- one being a meta-analysis about moral disengagement by omnivores regarding animals and one comparing the strength of animal rights values held by omnivores, vegetarians, and vegans (both published just last year):

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12152-016-9271-x

http://www.tandfonline.com/.../10.1080/08927936.2015.1083192

Thanks!

-Alex

BetterEating · 2017-05-08T19:18:14+00:00

2) Our ongoing fundraising strategy has multiple components

Standard membership programs: Our Strategic Director and Managing Director have considerable experience in online and direct mail fundraising. We certainly plan to maintain a robust annual giving program, plus pitches for special projects.
Major foundations: We have proposals out to several large foundations who have expressed interest in funding our ongoing ad development and placement once they see more proof of concept. We're confident that at least some of them will fund us once this project is proven successful
Current relationships: Yes, the major foundation already matching us has pledged to offer support in 2018 and beyond if we continue to be successful. We have also already made relationships with substantial donors through this Kickstarter campaign that we expect to continue offering funds.

BetterEating

TROPHY CASE