What motivates one group, can push another away.  Standard environmental messages tend to be ineffective with ATV and dirt bike riders. 

With thousands of trails across Canada and hundreds of thousands of riders, their impact on trails and ecosystems can be significant.  Sometimes they need to hear environmental messages that they don’t want to engage with. 

So how do you connect with them and get them to listen?

How about comedy? How about role reversal? How about some playfully chirping?

What could have been a standard PSA was instead a viral sensation with riders across Canada.

Introduction:

The Canadian Off-Highway Vehicle Distributors Council (COHV) is a non-profit trade association that represents manufacturers’ and distributors’ interests in off-highway vehicles. If you’ve ever driven an ATV or off-road vehicle in this beautiful country – you may be familiar with them.

Their mission is to advocate for the responsible use of off-highway vehicles, focusing on environmental stewardship, safety, sustainable trail use and anything else good for the community of riders.

The Challenge:

“Drive awareness and convince ATV and dirt bike riders to respect the environment around trails, specifically waterways where wildlife is impacted.”

• Raise awareness about an important environmental issue
• Secure buy-in from ATV and dirt bike riders across the country
• Ensure that trails remain open through this PSA

The Solution:

“Create a series of videos using comedy and situational humor to introduce the ideas without triggering resistance.”

• Create a series of educational videos that raise awareness around these issues
• Introduce comedy and humor to connect with ATV and dirt bike riders
• Produce an original style that COHV can use in future projects

Interested in other success stories from Hello Adventure? Visit our non-profit page or contact us at devin@helloadventure.ca.

Behind the scenes:

Transforming a PSA into a viral sensation

When an off-road vehicle veers off of the many trails in Canada – the environment and beauty of the trail around it are impacted.  Especially when the rider tears up water ways.  While most riders are respectful of trails, the bad apples were ruining the trails for everyone.

Wildlife populations, ecosystems, and other trail users were being impacted.  Motor vehicle trail use was being threatened, with the loss of access to these gorgeous points of Canada’s natural beauty. Education videos shared with their community went largely unnoticed.

If you search online, you’ll find thousands of educational videos and PSAs for various industries with little to no views. While these messages are important, in many cases they see low engagement.

This challenge was critical when COHV approached Hello Adventure Animation, they needed a solution to connect their messages with their audience. A whiteboard animated video was originally proposed by COHV, but during their foundation building process, it was quickly apparent that a whiteboard video explaining the facts wouldn’t reach their target audience.

Their audience of off-road vehicle riders in Canada, didn’t care to consume long-form learning content. Their community didn’t want to be told what to do, especially by these types of environment messages. Some find them condescending, and most are skeptical of what seems like white collared, urbanites telling them how to enjoy the wild. 

“Animation allows organizations to explore perspectives, create relatable characters, and scenarios to reframe how the viewer perceives an issue”

“The message was sticky, and the characters connected well.  COHV was able to reuse characters from the series for several years, increasing community buy-in to promote their message ranging from noise of vehicles to sharing trails. Creating long-lasting impact across messages”

Important messages deserve impactful stories

The process started with Hello Adventure Animations’ exploration process, called Foundation Building. It became clear early on that a long-winded PSA would repel COHV riders. The original script that COHV presented delivered information well, but wasn’t optimized to change minds or behaviors. The message needed to be shorter and focus on what mattered most to these riders which was the risk of losing access to trails that are used regularly. 

During the foundation-building process, we learned that the video would be part of a larger campaign. Dealerships would have brochures, posters, and other formats like radio ads, mailouts, and newsletters would be used to ensure their message gets across. Examining the broader campaign and where the video fit into the funnel, it was clear that it didn’t need to deliver all of the information on its own. The video would be most effective if it set up the campaign and opened the community’s minds.

The environmental impact of our favorite activities is an uncomfortable conversation none of us wanted to have. The layer of cognitive dissonance was real, and in most cases, these types of messages resulted in low engagement or the viewer scrolling past any video on the topic.

Through various rounds of design concepts, COHV and Hello Adventure Animation proposed a series of animated shorts that leaned on humor and a style that would resonate with COHV’s audience. Leaning on comedy and introducing wildlife pushing back, showed their perspective of the impacts that riders were having on their trails. 

By using comedy as the hook, Hello Adventure Animation produced three short videos ranging from 20 – 30 seconds. Each video highlighted original characters and used a mix of humans and animals to tell the story. But comedy isn’t enough to change beliefs or behavior. When changing minds, it’s important to understand what beliefs are immovable, which may be flexible, and where an existing bias is already skewing them in the desired direction.

Comedy ensured viewers would watch the video, but convincing them to take action was the success metric that COHV was seeking. An existing belief was poised to help and the key to action was a belief that there was a “they” who wanted to remove trail access to off-road vehicles. The “they” differed between riders including other trail users, such as hikers, cyclists, and horse riders, as well as politicians, urbanites, environmentalists, etc.

Scriptwriters were brought in with a background in writing for comedy to ensure the humor was relevant to OHV (Off-Highway Vehicles) riders and impactful for social media. 

“External threats were perceived and tend to motivate this group well, so we leaned into this. Each short video used comedy, ending with a deep masculine saying “Keep your wheels out of waterways, keep trails open”. This messaging connected with their audience and promoted action.” – Devin Smith, Founder at Hello Adventure Animation

Hello Adventure Animation designed a style that worked with their budget, message, and community. By working with their original idea of highlighting whiteboard elements, Hello Adventure Animation introduced characters speaking on camera to bring something new to their message. The design allowed COHV to use the characters and videos in different formats, which gave their team assets that could be reused in the future.

“To make the videos relatable, one of the ideas that got the green light was to replicate what it would feel like if an animal went through someone’s home, similar to how trails are impacted by vehicles passing through. COHV had an idea of having a fish go through someone’s house, and we were able to bring it to life through animation.”  – Devin Smith, Founder at Hello Adventure Animation“

Most PSA videos include extensive dialogue and explanations of complex terms, with COHV’s original script being three minutes long. Their audience connected with more short-form content so we had to focus on retention. COHV and Hello Adventure found that shorter, impactful copy would result in their target audience relating to the message much more convincingly 

This approach sparked mass online engagement as the series reached thousands of riders and increased COHV’s online identity. Animation allowed COHV to create characters that spoke to these pain points vs. relying on a spokesperson to illustrate the same issues.

“The foundation-building process made the direction we needed to take clear. Each question got the wheels turning, bringing new possibilities emerging to solve the problem.”
Because studios are smaller, they tend to manage only a handful of projects at one time which means a more white-glove approach where you may be the only project they’re working on. With fewer layers, studios offer direct access to the creative team, which means direct collaboration, deeper understanding on both sides and often quicker turnaround times. You’ll have a more hands-on experience with the people working on your project.

The impact COHV drove with their PSA campaign

“Over 40,000 people engaged with the first video within 3 weeks on social media with engagement that included shares, comments and sparking dialogue regarding the issue at hand. The success secured buy-in for future campaigns”

• Generated high engagement from ATV and dirt bike riders within weeks
• Created an original series and style that COHV was able to re-use

COHV used the series of videos to educate tens of thousands of vehicle owners and introduced its characters as the spokes(animals) of their trails.  

The format and characters lead to more successful campaigns which further drove awareness for riders across the country. The videos helped educate off-highway vehicle users about the importance of trail conservation, guide responsible behavior, and promote sustainable practices across Canada.

Animation allowed COHV to have more flexibility to edits even years later and reuse characters and art across campaigns making this video series a long-lasting tool for their team across campaigns. This format translates across digital, social, and other uses, easily translating to other languages.

The foundation-building process, which is a critical part of Hello Adventure’s process, helped establish the series’ direction in the first meeting. The divergent, creative process ensured new approaches were found and the highest performing ideas rose to the top. This collaborative effort ensured a quick and efficient production process, allowing COHV to present the most impactful video to their community.