Winners & Shortlists

OPERATION HUNGER

Bronze Eurobest

Case Film

Presentation Board

TitleOPERATION HUNGER
BrandACTIONAID ITALIA ONLUS
Product/ServiceACTIONAID
Category A05. MEDIA RELATIONS
Entrant Company OGILVY & MATHER Milan, ITALY
Advertising Agency OGILVY & MATHER Milan, ITALY
PR Agency INC ISTITUTO NAZIONALE PER LA COMUNICAZIONE ROME, ITALY
Credits
Name Company Position
Giuseppe Mastromatteo Ogilvy/Mather Chief Creative Officer
Giordano Curreri Ogilvy/Mather Client Creative Director/Art Director
Marco Geranzani Ogilvy/Mather Client Creative Director/Copywriter
Karina Nurdinova Ogilvy/Mather Junior Art Director
Fortunato Licandro Ogilvy/Mather Junior Copywriter
Enrica Cargnel Ogilvy/Mather Account Director
Daniela Biffi Actionaid Head Of Communication Unit
Francesca Landi Actionaid Head Of Pr
Francesca Tambussi Actionaid Head Of Individuals Unit
Paola Micucci Instituto Nazionale Per La Comunicazione Media Relation Sr.
Paola Canali Instituto Nazionale Per La Comunicazione Pr Director

The Campaign

There is enough food in the world to feed everyone, yet hunger is far from being defeated.Action Aid calls for more equal International food polices, promotes smallholder farmers’ rights to land and natural resources, and enhances sustainable agriculture. The yearly “Operazione Fame” campaign takes advantage of the World Food Day risen attention on the hunger issue, in order to collect funds and enhance advocacy to help ActionAid reaching its objectives. For World Food Day 2013 ActionAid Italia re-launched the “Operazione Fame” a fundraising and awareness campaign with a new symbol and logo, with TV, print and radio ads, with a press conference and with PR activities targeting both influencers and final audience. In order to reach the wider possible public with 0€ media budget but just PR pressure, the campaign needed to gain the more attention possible from influencers, journalists and TV anchor-men/women. And to do this “Operazione Fame” needed a new clear symbol, able to stand up among the huge amount of undraising campaigns.We created a a key symbol – a holed spoon – that helped explaining that to fight hunger we need the right tools: children and testimonials holding the holed spoon called for donations trough text messages. And TV/Radio shows, TV news as well as press articles, started talking about it. With amazing results.

The Brief

The main aim of ActionAid Italia’s “Operazione Fame” is to collect each year funds to help fighting the root causes of hunger. Many other organizations ask for donations and it is hard to stand up among the huge amount of fundraising campaigns. A deep look at other running campaings highlighted the need for a clear symbol to give strength to the message and help PR reaching the target’s heart.

Results

With 0 euro spent for media buying, the holed spoon got almost 60 million people impacted by TV earned media on TV shows in just one week and more than 150 articles in printed media, rising attention and sensibility on unequal distribution of food. Just as an example, during the TV show “Ballarò” on Rai2, with 3.400.000 viewers and 3minutes dedicated to the holed spoon, ActionAid Italia received over 10.000 SMSs of donations. ActionAid Italia facebook page reached 50.000 fans. But the most beautiful number of all was the number of messages received with donations: more than 70.000 SMS amounting to 154.000€ donated by Italians to help ActionAid’s efforts to defeat hunger.

Execution

Exploiting the buzz around the World Food Day, the holed spoon was launched when attention on the hunger issue was already raised, with a dedicated press conference on which journalist were invited to try and eat with the holed spoon. The campaign was aiming to have people donating during one single week (when the collecting text message number was active) and all the efforts were made in order to have the spoon shown as much as possible in press articles, TV/radio shows, TV/radio news, social media, during that week.

The Situation

In order to raise funds to support ActionAid in fighting the hunger problem, we needed to touch the wider possible target calling for donations. But with no media budget it seemed hard to do. PR activities were therefore the right point to start, but needed a strong symbol in order for the message to get through.

The Strategy

We created an holed spoon. A simple, tangible and sharable symbol of how it feels not to be able to have access to food. And we sent them to key influencers, actors, journalists and anchor-men/women. They were invited to hold it, show it and join the campaign, helping generating buzz, rising attention and fund-rising with their own target too.