…and its epic results
The Organic Effect is the latest campaign from Forsman & Bodenfors, for Swedish supermarket chain Coop. It’s not funny. Not OTT. There are no tech-y gizmos.
F&B’s ad for Coop simply compares what happens in your body when you eat conventional food and when you eat organic food.
To do that, it follows the real people in one family in their real lives. All that the F&B experiment changes is the food they eat. There are no artificial anythings.
Rather like the brand it’s advertising.
Coop has been a pioneer for organic food in Sweden since the 1980s – helping farmers switch from conventional to organic, working to make organic food more accessible for consumers and challenging politicians to do more for the production of organic food in Sweden.
Coop is owned by its customers and holds the view that people have a right to know what they’re eating. (And that they can reduce their exposure to chemicals by eating more organic food.)
The primary goal of the campaign is to strengthen Coop’s brand in Sweden. But it also aims to give organic farming a push globally. Because organic vs conventional food is an international issue, since what we eat comes from all over the world. And because the result of the experiment concerns everyone who eats.
The experiment was inspired by scientific studies showing that if you eat conventional food, you have a number of pesticides in your body. And that if you switch to organic food, most of these pesticides will be gone within a few days.
Very few people know about this, perhaps because very few people read scientific reports. So the experiment, aka ad, presents this information in a more accessible form than a scientific report.
A family that didn’t eat organic food, the Palmbergs, was found. Then independent laboratory, the Swedish Environmental Research Institute (IVL), was recruited. The lab made it clear that they couldn’t guarantee the experiment would achieve the expected result.
The first week the family ate as they used to (no organic food), and urine samples were taken from everyone in the family, every day. Eight of the chosen twelve pesticides showed up in their urine.
Then they switched to 100 % organic food for two weeks. New urine samples were taken, and after a few days almost all of the pesticides were gone.
The film simply documents the experiment and its results. The results are striking. So the film is.
Campaign credits:
Client: Coop
Agency: Forsman & Bodenfors
Art directors: Johan Eghammer, Johanna Hofman-Bang
Copywriter: Johan Olivero
Account managers: Lena Grundström, Patrik Danroth
Account director: Anders Härneman
Designer: Viktor Brittsjö
Agency producer: Åsa Hammar
Planners: Amelie Sandström & My Troedsson
Digital producer: Helena Wård
Production company: ACNE Production
Director: Marcus Svanberg
Producer: Kristofer Larsson
DOP: Anders Jedenfors
Offliine editor: Henning Mark
Post production: Shortcut Stockholm
Sound: Plop Produktion
Video distribution: Be On
Jenny Canborn
Renée Vennberg
Carl-Christian Dyrssen
Maria Molsa
