A Children’s Song Becomes a Dark Warning About Modern Food’s Unsustainability

These unnerving aspects of the modern food industry certainly aren’t new, but they’ve been getting more and more scrutiny in recent years as consumers increasingly consider the role of food sourcing on the environment and in fueling climate change.

A global survey by Kantar this year found that 16% of consumers have already started making changes to their buying habits to help lighten their carbon footprint, including reducing plastic bottle purchases and buying less meat. The trend was especially strong in Western European nations like Germany, Austria and the U.K.

So perhaps it’s no surprise that a powerful animation on the topic came out of Germany this week. “In Your Hands” is a haunting, though eventually optimistic, look at the modern food industry’s darkest side effects, including pollution, overfishing and the massive amounts of emissions generated by transporting food across the globe.

The spot, which reimagines the Christian children’s song “He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands,” was created by Hamburg agency TankTank and animation house Le Cube for German sustainable food brand Followfood.

“The message is universal but also something people choose to ignore: what we consume should be picked carefully and with awareness of the trail our food leaves behind it,” says director Ralph Karam. “This brings a different feel to the animation, with the whole world jumping on board just like the choir joins the song.”

Followfood is a decade-old sustainable food and advocacy brand that began as Followfish before expanding to include products like pizza, vegetables and wine.

For Le Cube, the project was one of personal interest, as staffers have found themselves scaling back the environmental impact of their food choices in recent years.

“We saw the food consumption awareness here at Le Cube transformed drastically in the last years, as the eating habits had changed for myself and several colleagues by adopting veganism, vegetarianism or just by searching for local organic grow food instead of industrial,” says executive producer Juan Manuel Freire. “This was a big motivator for us to engage in this project.”

CREDITS:

Animation Studio: Le Cube
Director: Ralph Karam
Executive Production: Juan Manuel Freire, Fernanda Soma
Production Manager: Mailén Gayoso
Animation Director: Daniel Duche
Art Director: Santiago Oddis
Illustration: Matheus Muniz, Jonnatan Cardoso, Andrea Devia, Josefina Preumayr
Comp: Ralph Karam, Fernando Lamatinna, Pato Passarelli
2-D Animators: Katherine Pryor, Maricel Piazza, Emmanuel Zampalo, Cintia Czeszczewik, David Andrés López, Pablo Rago, Eugenia Beizo, Bruno Brasil, Guadalupe Vyleta
3-D Modeling, Shading, Lighting: Fernando Lamattina
Clean-Up: Carlitos Carranza, Laura Desmerys, Andrés Moncalvo, Sofía Fernández, Juliana Gorgati, Carolina Borovich, Julieta Culaciati, David Andrés López, Mariángel Idiarte, Florencia Laurenzi, Gabriela Bosco, Sofía Ruocco

Agency: TankTank GmbH, Hamburg
Client: Followfood GmbH, Friedrichshafen
Marketing Director: Stefan Ruhe
Managing Partner: Jürg Knoll
Creative direction: Till Felber, Stefan Zschaler
AD: Rune Eckhardt, Kristina Düver, Marita Schilling
Copy: Till Felber
Project Management: Nathalie Eckstein, Patrick Plogstedt
Strategy: Stefan Zschaler
Agency Production: Alex Butaud

Audio: 2WEI Music
Arrangement: Simon Heeger, Christian Vorländer, Tip van den Bos
SoundFX: 2WEI, Björn H. Schulze