#pledgetorecompose: The Urban Death Project

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Taking Responsibility for your own Death

Recompose; The Urban Death Project

How can we start a conversation with youths about death? Or rather, what happens afterward.

With limited land space in Singapore and greenhouse gas emissions on the rise, traditional funerary methods are becoming unsustainable. The Urban Death Project(Recompose) is a new system that utilises the natural process of decomposition to safely and gently turn our deceased into soil. The project is creating a meaningful, equitable, and ecological alternative to existing options for the care of the dead. The problem? A lack of support and awareness, and apathetic attitudes from the generation bearing the impact.

Target Audience:

Singaporean Youths of the age group 18-24. They do not want to be a burden to their loved ones and do not want to be forgotten after death. They also have not thought much about death.

Brand Insights:

The service allows us to nourish new life after death
The service allows us to give back to the earth after death
The service allows us to leave the world in a meaningful way

Target Audience Insights:

I do not want to be a burden to my loved ones after death.
I do not want to be forgotten after death.
I haven’t thought much about death.

Key Message

Take responsibility for your own death.

Objective

To convince the target audience to make a decision on their own after-life care; to choose recomposition.

Approach:

For the ads, we came up with 3 different personas, an 18 year old student, a 21 year old clubber, and a 24 year old white collar worker. Each persona is evidently seen in the art direction for each ad, with all surrounding elements suggesting the persona. Highlighters and polaroid photos for a student, cigarettes and free drink tickets for the clubber etc.

A phone is placed in the centre of each ad, with a social media post showing the most important part of our ad; the copy. Each post comes from the voice of each persona, telling their worldly struggles, and their realisation of how the decisions they have to make in their lives are never as important as their decision for the end-of-life. The post ends with the resolute hashtag, and call to action #pledgetorecompose

Each persona’s struggle is also hinted and related to in each ad, in the lower right corner.

Since our target audience has not thought much about the topic of death, our goal was to educate and spark their resolve to think about death. this is inline with our key message; taking responsibility for your own death. We wanted to capture their attention using social media posts along with items they would relate to. The copy approaches the subject of death in a subtle yet powerful way, in the voice of the target audience themselves, and thus urges them to start taking responsibility for their own death while introducing recompose as an afterlife method that would make this choice easy.

The media we selected would be a bus stop ad, placed at select bus stops where the target audience would usually pass by, such as outside schools, nightlife spots, and large offices. Those who pass by these spots would also be likely to relate to the persona in the ad.