While there are people who waste food just to celebrate a big event in their lives, there are also humans who struggle with food every day. That’s the case of over 190 million people. And that’s a number that applies to India only. The worldwide numbers would make one cry. But “enough is enough” thought McCann Sydney and The Hunger Project Australia, two partners who came up with an ingenious way to end this epidemy that affects so many of us.
“A Table to End Hunger” is the subject of this week’s #ThrowBrandThursday column and comes as a reminder of a possible solution to help the two partners solve a world-first problem whilst combating a larger problem of the developing countries—food privation. Launched on Valentine’s Day, 2016, the kind project invited food enthusiasts to bid on tables at exclusive restaurants normally associated with long lead reservation times. During the busiest night of the year, getting a table at one of the best Australian restaurants can be almost impossible. But not if the couples, who wanted to go out, bid on the reservation.
The hungry guests were invited to bid on VIP tables via A Table to End Hunger’s special eBay site. High-profile restaurants joined the cause, starting February and going until March 2016, inviting guests to outbid others to get their desired reservation. Behind the award-winning campaign’s concept and strategy stands a lot of work done by the Sydney-based agency, which also directed the media, while Dec PR was responsible for the project’s PR, delivering the strategy in a clever way.
Cathy Burke, CEO of The Hunger Project Australia, explained the background for the idea: “Australia is a nation of foodies whose appetite for the greatest and latest in the dining-out scene is insatiable. That’s why we’re thrilled to partner with McCann and Australia’s top restaurants to help solve chronic, persistent world hunger.”
“The Hunger Project’s commitment to ending world hunger is more than just a mission statement. We worked hard to develop an idea to drive PR and lift awareness of The Hunger Project and support for their incredible work. Bidding on a table to put food on someone else’s simply made sense,” added McCann Sydney’s Executive Creative Director, Dejan Rasic.
All proceeds from the auctions went to The Hunger Project, which helps women and men—from the disadvantaged backgrounds in India, Bangladesh, and Africa—end their hunger. The program delivered training programs for the people living in these developing countries, teaching them farming techniques to grow more food, nutrition information, so that their kids can grow healthy, HIV AIDS education, literacy programs, so people can learn how to read and write, and entrepreneurial skills, amongst others.