The module on Digital Strategies & Interactive Media allowed me to create a concept for an interactive digital campaign ‘Stella’s S-Wave Orchard’. From 3 options, I chose the option of branded sustainable fibres, textiles and yarns with Stella McCartney’s S-Wave Croc-Effect Embossed Shoulder Bag featuring Croc-effect embossed UPPEAL™ (by Mable Industries) vegan alternative to animal leather sourced from apple waste. This textile is a replacement for lucrative crocodile leather which has caused wider controversy, otherwise used by large luxury fashion houses.

 

The ‘Stella’s S-Wave Orchard’ campaign invites consumers to Northern Italy, where the iconic S-Wave bag is made from apple waste. The key messages of this campaign highlight issues of food waste and animal cruelty in relation to crocodile factory farming. A handbag is the perfect choice for a campaign as people tend to invest in these accessories as a long-term, less seasonal purchase, meaning the campaign will see further ROI if successful. 

 

The factory-farmed crocodiles grow up in joint housing before moving to isolated solitary pens to reduce scratching on their skin. Australian law allows for crocodiles to be kept in cages shorter than their body length, making the animals unable to travel as they would in their natural environment. The crocodiles are killed at 2-3 years old, whereas their usual lifespan would be up to 70 years old. The cruelty extends to environmental impacts such as “species endangerment and extinction, and the alteration of natural crocodile relationships with their ecosystems, which would normally benefit biodiversity. Too, the tanning of crocodile skins is water-intensive and results in toxic pollution”.

 

Food waste is one of the major contributors to climate change, it is estimated a third of produce is wasted; meaning unnecessary energy, water, harvesting, production, packaging and shipping usage. According to WWF, as food rots in landfill it produces methane, “a greenhouse gas even more potent than carbon dioxide”. Made in Italy, UPPEAL by Mabel Industries has created a greener alternative to animal leather. A vegan, cruelty-free textile made from the by-product of apples grown for juice and jam in Northern Italy, that would alternatively require 30,000 tonnes of apple powder to be discarded (Mable Industries, n.d.). As a more circular alternative, it reduces the demand for fossil fuels as a renewable energy source. Leather containing apple waste has notable reductions in global warming, stratospheric ozone depletion, marine eutrophication and other environmental factors in comparison to leather made solely from PU. 

 

This campaign included rendered / interactive mockups for digital assets increasing my digital literacy. In order to create this campaign, I created an Augmented Reality (AR) space on Adobe Aero that captures the Northern Italy orchards where the bag is made, interactive apple-themed games such as ‘Apple Run(way)’ and ‘Apple Crunch’ on Adobe After Effects and Media Encoder, and a ‘Which Apple Am I?’ Meta filter coded on Meta Spark Studio. All of which would be on a new app, designed using wireframing on Figma.