Flash Animation Provides Creative Way to Spread Advocacy Message

With so many causes competing for public attention, it can be difficult for nonprofit organizations to break through the clamor and get their message out. OpenTheGovernment.org (OTG) - a broad coalition of journalists, consumer and good government groups, environmentalists, and labor unions that focuses on making the federal government a more open place - created a flash animation video to raise the profile of government secrecy concerns. By providing an entertaining way to educate people, the flash animation drove over 42,000 visitors to OTG's website in a little over one month, and tripled the number of people signing up to receive action alerts and email messages. This technology clearly holds great promise to help nonprofit organizations spread the word and attract new supporters for their causes.

Background: Fighting Government in the Dark

March 12-18 marked Sunshine Week 2006, a collaborative effort to generate a critical mass of public discussion about government secrecy. News stories, editorials, and opinion pieces on the importance of government openness, guides explaining citizens' rights and how to exercise them, and public forums to bring the issue into communities reached the public simultaneously to raise the profile of efforts to expand citizen access to government information. These efforts took place against the backdrop of rising concerns about widespread secrecy at many levels of government today. Many advocates - both liberals and conservatives - have characterized the current presidential administration as one of the most secretive in recent history, noting that the number of annual declassification of documents by the federal government has declined significantly over the past five years. Freedom of Information Act requests have also met with increasing refusals and delays from federal agencies that cite exemptions which allow denial of the requests. In general, the culture of secrecy in the federal government has increased.

Creative Publicity

OTG wanted to leverage the interest that would be generated by the nationwide Sunshine Week campaign to reach new people with their message. The coalition steering committee and staff decided to experiment with the use of flash animation - creating a short, animated video that could be downloaded from the OTG website. OTG connected with a political cartoonist, Matt Wuerker, who also wanted to experiment with using flash animation in his work. After an initial meeting with coalition leaders Conrad Martin of the Fund for Constitutional Government, Gary Bass of OMB Watch and Rick Blum and Emily Feldman of OpenTheGovernment.org to discuss goals for the flash animation and substantive concerns about the growth of secrecy, Wuerker developed a "treatment" providing a template for each screen. Once the treatment was agreed upon, Wuerker started creating the cartoons and graphics. After several drafts, OTG had a completed project ready to post on their website. The creative process, from the initial ideas meeting to the final animated version, took just over a month. The flash was posted at its own location on the web, http://inthedark.openthegovernment.org, so that people could be directed to it with a link and it begins to play automatically. OTG placed a link to the flash on their homepage.

"Are We Safer in the Dark? An Animated Look Behind the Curtain of Government Secrecy," includes just under three minutes of animation to raise attention about government secrecy. The flash uses sound and image repetition of its main message - "It's a Secret" - to convey that the problem exists across a wide range of issues, from global warming to lobbyist influence to the Medicare prescription drug plan. At the end of the video, increasingly quick-tempo music (The Hall of the Mountain King by Edvard Grieg) is followed by silence, which magnifies the final message, a lone citizen remarking that "I don't feel safer in the dark." OTG fully utilized the various capabilities of the flash animation - visual, sound, and movement - to strengthen the delivery of their message. The last screen flashes a message about people's responsibility to get involved, then provides an opportunity to click onto an Action page that includes alerts, additional facts, and a place to sign up for OTG updates.

By utilizing this technology, OTG hoped to create a "viral campaign," where each of the coalition partners would send the link to the animation to their email lists, which would result in lots of people forwarding it along to their friends and colleagues to help spread the message. The results demonstrate that the animation was a successful tool for engaging new people who might not otherwise have known about the issues. Since "Are We Safer?" was launched in mid-March, it has logged over 42,000 unique visits. The action page linked to from the animation contains three action alerts, as well as a place to sign-up for OpenTheGovernment.org emails. In the past month, OTG has gotten several hundred new sign-ups, three to four times the usual amount.

Maximizing Technology's Impact

To help assess whether the flash animation achieved its goals, OTG used software to analyze the web logs that track details about the animation's reach. These details include number of visits to the flash animation, number of visits to the action page (which required an additional click at the end of the video), specifics on which areas of the action page people visited, and "links from an external page," which helps OTG determine the audience that has access to the flash already and where more outreach is necessary. This tracking information revealed two important trends - one, the dramatic rise in new sign-ups for email alerts, and two, a large drop-off from the number of animation viewers to those actually clicking through to the action page.

Using the data from the web logs and interviews with some viewers of the flash animation, OTG was able to learn more about the experiment. For example, the drop-off in click-throughs to the Action page may have been a design flaw. If the Action page had been the last screen in the video many thought there might have been more people taking action. (Again, the current approach was an ending that said "click here" to learn more about how to get involved. That click took the user to the Action Page.) On the other hand, as a separate page from the animation, it was possible to update the Action page. If it had been embedded - thereby not requiring an additional click to reach the information - the Action page would have been static.

Other issues about the flash animation included its length, whether the message was too repetitive, whether the closing line - "I don't feel safer in the dark" - which was delivered in total darkness took too long to deliver. Some viewers thought the flash animation was over even before the closing line was delivered (which also meant they never got to the Action page).

There was also a big difference in viewer reaction from people over 40 from those under 40. The older group was less impressed, but thought it was "interesting" and "cute." The younger crowd generally was energized by the flash animation and said things like "a powerful message." Bloggers in particular liked the flash animation and the sledge-hammer message it conveyed.

Despite these issues about the flash animation, OTG concluded the flash was a powerful public education tool. The project costs were affordable - several thousand dollars to develop the animation - and technological demands not too high. Though the coalition's technology coordinator initially created a separate IP address with two-thirds of its bandwidth dedicated to the flash animation, it turned out to not have any negative effects on the site and did not slow anything down on server. For viewers, the flash technology is also easy to use. Many people have computers with multimedia capacity can easily download softward to play flash animation. OTG sees the development of the flash animation as a good investment of time as well. After the work to complete the initial creation, the flash video perpetuates itself, with people passing along the video to continue generating buzz for the organization.

Sounds Great, But Can My Organization Do It?

Though the technology may at first seem intimidating, there are several reasons why flash animation is a worthwhile investment for nonprofit organizations. Matt Wuerker, the cartoonist who designed OTG's flash, often works with grassroots organizations looking for creative ways to get their message out. He explains that flash animation can get people's attention and promote issues that may not be visible in the mainstream media debate. By creating compelling videos that people can pass along, and wiring these flash videos with links, the technology can take people directly into the websites of organizations that are taking action on a given issue. In addition, a highly creative or interesting video may actually bounce into the mainstream media. For example, CNN runs a regular spot that covers viral campaigns like the one OTG launched and highlights the best online videos each month.

One thing learned from the OTG experience is that groups need to spend time planning the unveiling of the flash animation. It requires getting other organizations to help distribute information about the flash, as well as getting bloggers to write about its availability.

In terms of actually creating flash animation, there are several options. One is to work directly with a cartoonist such as Wuerker, or a design firm that can handle the creation process. Another option is to purchase software that provides flash templates with customizable designs. Several websites, including www.trendyflash.com and www.swishzone.com, offer flash creation products for under $100. Whatever the design route, flash movies have great potential to transform how nonprofits organizations run public education and engagement campaigns.