Aluna The Movie
The Kogi are the last surviving civilization from the world of the Tairona, and their cities high in the Sierra Nevada mountains are untouched by our world. In 1990, a BBC1 documentary brought global attention to the Kogi and their warning of the environmental damage we are causing to the earth.
Two decades later and convinced their message had gone unheeded they made a film, Aluna, with help from Alan Ereira.
The film was available on Amazon Prime and Netflix. It’s now available for free on YouTube and has been watched over 1.8 million times.
The Project
Aluna the movie was released in 2012 and funded by private donations. In 2018 the movie was launched on YouTube to watch free of charge, helping spread the Kogi message throughout the world.
Due to its success on YouTube, the team behind the movie decided to publish it in 15 different languages to increase its reach across the globe.
That’s where I came in.
01. Consultancy
The website had been left untouched since 2013 and was in desperate need of a revamp. Over the past 10 years web technologies, social media and the devices people used to connect to the internet have moved on at a considerable pace.
I spent time researching the Kogi people, watched the movie and explored the movies social media audience.
Armed with this knowledge I put together a relaunch strategy.
02. Creativity
I reworked the content from the old site into bite sized chunks, combining it with striking images to make it more readable, engaging and easier to navigate. A new colour palette was introduced to complement the indigenous colours of the Kogi.
The site was designed to work on all devices, with 45% of target audience using smartphones to view the site.
Social media accounts and the YouTube channel were revamped and reorganised.
03.Integration
The top priority of the website was to spread the Kogi message and get users to watch the movie. With this in mind, I integrated all 15 YouTube movies into the site and implemented a simple movie language selector for ease of use.
Social media share buttons were added to the site to help spread the Kogi message. Google Analytics was integrated so we could monitor where the audience was coming from. The site is also connected to Mailchimp’s API newsletter system.
We are now in the process of translating the site into 15 different languages using WPML plugin for WordPress.
04. Marketing
All 15 movies were added to the YouTube channel and search engine optimised in each language. The Aluna Facebook page already had a lot of followers, so I decided to relaunch the site and movies via Facebook.
This proved to be a great success, with over 28,000 people engaging with our launch post.