Zoo Perspectives
〰️
Zoo Perspectives 〰️
Our Zoo perspective.
Animals at every angle.
Adventure at every turn.
Who wouldn’t want to work on the Saint Louis Zoo account? No one. Who wanted to work on it more than anyone humanly alive? Me and Caroline May.
Our video to announce we won the AOR business, starring Caroline and Raquel. Compiled from hundreds of photos I took with my phone on a rainy day at the Saint Louis Zoo.
The Idea
Our work for the Saint Louis Zoo was created with intensity. Intense joy, intense work and an intense feeling like we were doing what we always wanted to with the people we wanted to do it with. From the RFP to the development of an all-new awareness campaign and visual system, we created with a small, scrappy team fueled by big dreams and frequent vanilla lattes.
In the original proposal, even before we got the work, we wrote and concepted what would evolve directly into the Zoo Perspectives campaign. The vision and reach of our original pitch grew and rotated in space from there. We created print ads, billboards, social ads, a broadcast tv commercial, animations, on-site augmented reality experiences, and more. Most of this was in scope. Some, well… sometimes you just gotta make Instagram stickers.
“Under, over, around and through. Get a perspective that’s totally... new!”
Sample creative presented in our original proposal, which would later become the Zoo Perspectives campaign.
The Raquelfie™
While on location at the Zoo taking photos for our company’s announcement video (above), something unexpected happened that ended up defining the campaign visuals. I had spent an entire day directing Raquel and Caroline, “Take a step to the left,” “Now walk 2 steps,” “Ok arms up, now arms down,” “Spin 180 degrees, but like, slowly.” I took 400 or so photos total. But right at the end of the shoot, when we were all standing near the big concrete ZOO sign, Raquel snapped a selfie.
I saw the image appear on her phone and became both amazed and confused. “Wait, how did you even do that?” I asked. She managed to get a perfectly odd angle of her face upside down with the sign at the bottom. If this didn’t communicate seeing the Zoo from a different perspective, what would? It was so funny that I’d taken 400 photos and she took one, and it was the best shot of the day.
We (with Raquel’s permission) used her selfie to mock up an ad to show the clients. Just, as-is. We put the “Get a Zoo perspective.” headline in the center, and voilà! Advertising.
We kept wondering if we’d eventually have to change or reshoot the image. Surely you don’t just take a selfie at the Zoo, and it becomes a hero visual of a campaign. But it kept making it through round after round of approvals. As fate would have it, the Raquelfie made it to the big time. In print. Like, in the real-life world. Amazing!
Our first approved visual for the Zoo Perspectives campaign was a selfie taken by Raquel Petty-Diaz. She saw the real (actual) perspective that the two creative directors on the shoot with her did not.
The many facets of Zoo
Not every image was going to be as amenable to copy as Raquel’s photo, so the next thing on the list was to create a visual system to house not only headlines, but CTAs, dates, and other information that might need a special call-out. As much as I hate adhering to “guidelines,” sometimes it helps to have a bit of structure. This structure, though, needed to be flexible enough to take center stage when needed, and to become a background element when the animals needed to be the stars.
Enter: The Prism.
“The Prism” is a cuboctohedron geometric shape with 6 square facets perfect for housing text and showing different sides of the Zoo experience.
A sizzle reel I created to showcase our work on Endangered Species Day: an on-site augmented reality experience at the Zoo featuring a lot of really cute animals, some 3D habitat islands, an animal adoption quiz AR filter, and you guessed it: THE PRISM.
The Commercial
We made the most of our 30-second broadcast commercial by embarking on 3-days of filming about 16 species of birds, carnivores, ungulates, insects, reptiles and amphibians at the Saint Louis Zoo. Our goal was to film (PS remember not to say “shoot” when at the Zoo!) animals at interesting, unexpected angles. Zoo Perspectives is about flipping things on their head, sometimes literally.
With this video, we aimed to show the animals quirky sides (and sometimes even their backsides). The team did all sorts of fun things to get the shot (I mean, the um… the… moving pictures), and for the most part, the animals really gave it their all.
Initial storyboards for the video. I designated which animals we wanted feature, ensuring we showed an array of species types, while also keeping in mind which animals might be out and about, and ready for their closeups. A few animal changes were made, but we did manage to stay pretty close to the original plan!
Our Zoo Perspectives campaign commercial! Note that Speke’s gazelle butt. My personal favorite animal at the Saint Louis Zoo.
What if we just… did it?
This body of work isn’t just work. It’s the product of building something that wasn’t there before. Building a new client relationship. Building an emotional connection to place and its animals and the the people who care about them. Building a deep affection for little Speke’s gazelle butts. We truly had as much fun dreaming about it and scheming about it as we did actually making stuff. And some of my favorite work moments ever were going to in-person meetings at the Zoo in our new animal print outfits (I once went to a client meeting dressed as a zebra).
The best thing about this sometimes-frustrating industry is finding someone else who is just as intensely and personally excited about what they are doing as you are, and then asking yourselves –in Caroline’s words– “What if we just did it?” and then… getting it done!
A few of the custom, animated Instagram stickers we created. We also made many more for various events. Key word: STLZOO
Look again (and again and again)
Did you know a group of flamingos is called a flamboyance? Well it is, and isn’t that fantastic? The Saint Louis Zoo has quite the flamboyance (in the warmer months) of flamingos that preen in the green-ish water just outside the Lakeside Cafe. They’re naturals in front of the camera. I mean when you got it, you got it.
So as we were in the early stages of developing the Zoo Perspectives campaign visuals, I found in the Zoo’s image library, a photo of one of their flamingos appearing to look at themself in the water. It was another perfect example of seeing things… differently. This symbolic image of the reflective, pondering pink flamingo appeared over and over throughout the campaign as we created new ads and videos. This eventually culminated in a flamingo named Fletcher becoming the unlikely star of the Zoo “Wild Lights” holiday video.
“See yourself differently, and your world too. Just take a look around at the Saint Louis Zoo!””
Image 1: Zoo Perspectives print ad, May 2023.
Image 2: Zoo Perspectives commercial still, July 2023.
Image 3: Wild Lights commercial still, November 2023.
Well, that was fun.
Credits
Client
Saint Louis Zoo
Agency
Paradowski Creative
Creative Direction - Design
Terri Mitchell
3D Team
Noah Ilbery
Ayushman Johri
Selftographer
Raquel Pitty-Diaz
Video Team
Matt Underwood
Daniel Kayamba
Suzane Pham
Creative Direction - Copy
Caroline May
Design Support
Haley Hoffman
Loren Zaitz
Hayden Loos