Born Free are a charity dedicated to ensuring animals are born free and stay wild. They came to us with a problem: it’s not widely known that most lions in South Africa aren’t born free. They’re raised in captivity and exploited for profit at every stage of their lives. The harsh reality is that keepers charge tourists to hug and take photos with them. Then, when they grow too big for cuddles, they’re sold to trophy hunters and shot in canned hunting facilities. At no point are they ever free to roam. Not only is this inhumane practice legal, but it’s big business in South Africa and growing all the time.

Every year thousands of tourists visit lion ‘sanctuaries’ in South Africa where they pet lion cubs. They do this with the best intentions, believing that the lion cubs have been orphaned and will one day be released into the wild. The truth is far more sinister: this is just the first stage in a cycle of abuse that leads to their ultimate death. We wanted to both raise awareness and effect real change.

To do this, we knew our work needed to powerfully demonstrate the link between petting lion cubs and the trophy hunting industry. Due to a minimal media budget, we needed to create something that would be highly shareable. We knew our message would evoke a strong response, and we wanted to ensure that indignation could immediately translate into action, so we directed people to sign a petition to the South African government to change the law.

We created ‘The Bitter Bond’: an emotional animated story of a lion keeper and her cub that ends in the ultimate betrayal. The 2 minute film is set to the famous track “Born Free” by Matt Monro. The story shows how those who are responsible for raising and nurturing a lion are the ones ultimately responsible for their death. And not only responsible for it, but they profit from it. It’s this betrayal of our common nurturing instinct that gives the film its heart-breaking power. The film was written and created over the space of a year. It was specifically designed for people to share on social media all around the world. We wanted as many people as possible to learn about the problem and sign the petition.

The film has been a huge success for Born Free. In the first 24 hours it gathered over 1.5 million views and 48,000 signatures to the petition. At the time of writing, it has received a total of 11,897,212 views, over 100,000 shares and generated over 230,000 signatures to the petition without any media spend. Along the way, it’s been retweeted by a host of global celebs and influencers, including Ellen DeGeneres, Ricky Gervais, Bryan Adams and Stephen Fry.