Working title: What if one day there is no more infant formula for your baby?

Main characters/subjects: My main subjects are the group of purchasing agents who hoards large amount of Australian infant formulas, Chinese buyers, and Australian mothers.

Logline or premise: The purpose of this documentary is to criticise the purchasing agents in Australia for gaining profit through hoarding, cutting the supply of local infant formulas, and hurting the feelings of local mothers. This documentary invites audiences, especially those purchasing agents, to reflect on their ethical behaviour and stop such marketing method.

Form, format, medium: The format of this project will be a web documentary as well as an interactive documentary. The content will combine with traditional linear narrative structure.

It will firstly introduce the concept and nature of purchasing agents to the audience. Next, explain the reason why some purchasing agents use unethical marketing means to hoard infant formulas. Then, it will criticize such action for the impact they leave on the local market for infant formulas, reveal its effect on the local people, and finally, appeal to such purchasing agents and the relevant government agencies to take actions.

I will do a lot of interviews with individually owned business, some student purchasing agents, and mothers affected by this. Besides, I will interview pharmacists and infant formula brands to learn about the effect of the purchasing industry on them. I will also collect a lot of photos, relevant news reports, videos and audios to integrate into my project.

I will use Klynt to realize my project. Klynt is an editing & publishing application dedicated to interactive storytellers, so I think it will help me greatly.

Market: I’m mainly aiming at purchasing agents, Chinese buyers, mothers affected by the event, and the local government. They are all interested parties of the industry. Chinese buyers’ huge demand for infant formulas causes the purchasing agents in Australia to use abnormal marketing means. Then, local mothers are forced to deal with the shortage of infant formulas, or extremely high price. This chain of effects will eventually need the local government to propose appropriate policies to solve the problem.

Story world: In recent years, China’s demands for Australian infant formulas shoot up like a rocket. Meanwhile, a large population of young mothers experiences a credibility crisis as they witness constant quality issues and fraud with China’s own infant formula brands. Since many consumers turn to foreign brands, an industry called daigou, meaning “buying on behalf of”, starts to flourish.

My story world will mainly focus on purchasing agents in Melbourne, explaining how they help Chinese buyers shop here and then sell them to China. How the market competition pushes some agents to build their own warehouse and express delivery service. How they make a profit by buying and hoarding large amount of infant formulas from pharmacies and supermarkets, thus leading to a local shortage and huge controversies. In general, this documentary will talk about the story behind the operation of these purchasing agents and their marketing means, and reveal the flaws brought by this large population.

Visualization: This project will combine the original interview clips with some pictures, audios, news reports, interviews, and relevant video footages to make a web documentary.

Participation and interactivity: This project will be published on Klynt. Audience no longer needs to sit quietly in front of the screen to watch ready-made works; rather, once a work is released on klynt, the audience can interact with it and can choose whatever segment or information they are interested in looking at. For example, when the audience is watching interviews, they can choose to click on relevant photos and news reports to get more information. They can also comment on them.

Influences and competition:

Influences：

This digital media project is about pointing out the influence and troubles that infant formula purchasing agents in Australia bring to the local people in need. The purpose is to make them realize the difficult situation their actions put local babies in, and reflect on how their marketing means have affected the market. It also appeals to Chinese buyers to resist such unethical method, and to think more about the local demanders while purchasing large quantity of infant formulas for their own babies. In addition, I hope the local government can propose ppropriate policies in reaction to this.

Competition：

The form of interaction of one linear narrative web documentary called “Alma- A tale of Violence” is similar to mine. While Alma talks about her experience in the gang, the audience can use the mouse to scroll up and watch relevant video clips and photos. My project will enable the audience to use the clicking method to choose the clips they want to watch, thereby making them more directly involved in my story.