Projects.
City of Greater Dandenong
The project
SBM creates a fun and engaging animated video for local city council, extolling the virtues of sustainability.
The puzzle
The City of Greater Dandenong serves a vibrant and highly diverse community in southeastern Melbourne, with a vision to be one of Australia’s most sustainable cities by 2030. To help achieve this goal, they were seeking a series of three animated videos touching on vital sustainability issues. The videos needed to be accessible across an incredibly diverse audience of different language and cultural backgrounds, so a high degree of clarity was required across all messaging. They also needed to be fun and engaging for a wide range of ages.
The solution
SBM’s video team delivered three animated videos, aimed at engaging audiences across many different walks of life. Before the project started in earnest, a great deal of time was spent learning from the Dandenong City Council to develop a full understanding of their local community. Rather than a conventional ‘explainer’ format, it was decided that the videos would take the form of a conversation between two characters. This enabled the use of informal, easy-to-understand everyday language. Recurring characters ‘Syd and Monkey’ were created to develop a sense of familiarity.
![](https://smithbrothersmedia.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/SydandMonkey_Intro-64x29.gif)
![](https://smithbrothersmedia.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/SydandMonkey_Intro_M-64x58.gif)
The results
The resulting videos clearly communicate the core issues via quirky, fun conversations and vibrant animation. Syd and Monkey are able to communicate vital topics, backed by engaging, head-turning visuals and creating a rapport with audiences that strengthens the council’s overarching sustainability strategy. Syd and Monkey now have a dedicated sustainability education page on the City of Greater Dandenong’s website. The hosted videos remain highly relevant both as information resources and engaging content.
![](https://smithbrothersmedia.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/SydandMonkey_Monkey-1-64x29.gif)
![](https://smithbrothersmedia.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/SydandMonkey_Monkey_M-64x58.gif)
![](https://smithbrothersmedia.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/SydandMonkey_Screengrabs_Wide-64x29.png)
![](https://smithbrothersmedia.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/SydandMonkey_Screengrabs-55x64.png)