How do you make complex legislation understandable and engaging? And above all: How do you get people to act against it? We broke it down to its core for people to quickly understand the matter: That the milk lobby seems to think that people can’t distinguish oat drink from cow’s milk. The Milk Captcha aimed to stop people in their tracks and convey the absurdity of the proposed law. But also to give them a quick and easy way to fight it.

Since October 2020, Amendment 171 had been on the table in front of agricultural politicians in the European Union. A proposed law that wants to censor plant-based food and drinks by banning the use of words, packaging and pictures that can be associated with dairy products. Why? Ask the milk lobby. They seem to believe that expressions such as "alternative to yoghurt" or "milk-free" make it difficult for consumers to distinguish plant-based products from dairy. Or they just see running stuff through the EU legal system as an effective way to stop the transition to more sustainable food consumption. Which to be honest is a pretty smart move, because very few people have the strength to get involved in such complex issues. Our task was to create interest, engagement for Amendment 171 and of course to stop it.

The milk lobby was pushing hard for AM171 and claimed that expressions such as "alternative to yoghurt" or "milk-free" made it difficult for consumers to distinguish plant-based products from dairy. But are people really that stupid? We developed a Captcha to find out and integrated it on WeTransfer and various news sites around Europe. But instead of letting people tell a bridge from a mailbox as traditional Captchas do, we let them do something just as easy: Tell a package of oat drink from a package of cow’s milk. Interaction did the trick here, pointing at the stupidity behind the proposed law. And then it was an easy match to get people to sign a joint petition. The campaign collected over 450,000 signatures and AM171 was scrapped. 

In short, AM171 is a hundred-plus pages long law proposal aiming to complicate the shift over to a more sustainable food consumption. “Wow, that sounds highly interesting and engaging!” said no one ever. So how do we make a complex law proposal understandable? We broke it down to its core for people to quickly understand the matter: that the milk lobby seems to think that people can’t distinguish oat drink from cow’s milk. The Milk Captcha aimed to both stop people in their tracks but also to convey the absurdity of the Amendment 171 – and last but not least guide you in how you can help to fight it.

The Milk Captcha was integrated on WeTransfer and on major news sites throughout Europe. We worked closely with their developers to make the experience as absurd as possible. WeTransfer’s main target group is the wider creative industry, which on a lot of parameters conveniently tend to be health- or environmentally-conscious to a high degree. We knew that these users care about the issue, but also be susceptible to our comedic interactive approach. The news sites were also carefully chosen, pinpointing the places where we could crank up a lot of debate.

This case was all about getting the citizens of Europe interested and engaged in a complicated law, proposed by the European Union. Because if we didn’t, the bill would most likely have passed unnoticed and the consequences would had been extensive. Not only for Europe's consumers, but also for the EU's own lofty climate goals. Luckily, more than 500.000 interacted with the Captcha on WeTransfer alone. The campaign collected over 450,000 signatures – and the proposed law was scrapped. Success!