Documentarians To Create Immigrant Food Videos Targeted To Conservatives

Daniel Kline and Mirra Fine, the award-winning food documentarians behind The Perennial Plate, are shifting their focus from sustainable eating to immigrant and refugee issues. Their goal is to make five short films, highlighting five different immigrant or refugee families who sit down to a family meal. They then plan to take those films and target them to conservative viewers on Facebook.

The goal of these films is to build understanding and connections by showing how much we have in common through the basic need to eat. And to show how little we have to fear each other, because this need is the same for everyone.

“Food and family are the great connectors. And by sharing inspiring European, Latino, African, Middle Eastern and Asian commonalities, there’s an opportunity to build a bridge,” Kline says in the video above.

The goal of the targeted advertising strategy is to stop preaching to the choir.

“One of the problems we’re having as a nation is that many of us, are only getting one side of the story from the news and our friends on Facebook,” explains Kline. The Perennial Plate will use sponsored posts on Facebook to target moderate voters in swing states. They hope to break through what might be typically seen in a conservative FB feed with a new perspective on immigrants. “We want to introduce positive immigrant stories to a Facebook feed that might be more prone to negative stories,” says Kline.

Facebook ads let you pinpoint the exact location and interest of viewers you want to advertise to, making this strategy entirely possible. But of course, it costs money. So The Perennial Plate is hosting a Kickstarter campaign to make enough funds to realize this goal. For more information, watch the video above or head on over to Kickstarter.