Title	SPARE CHAIR SUNDAY
Brand	PREMIER FOODS
Product/Service	BISTO BEST
Category	A01. Fast Moving Consumer Goods
Entrant	McCANN LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM
Idea Creation	McCANN LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM
Production	FISH FILM Madrid, SPAIN

Name	Company	Position
Rob Doubal	McCann London	Co-President & Chief Creative Officer
Laurence Thomson	McCann London	Co-President & Chief Creative Officer
Imogen Jones	McCann London	Creative
James Rooke	McCann London	Creative
Lianne Galazka	McCann London	Creative
Eivind Holmboe	Fish	Director
David de la Flor	Fish	Producer
Claire Hopkins	McCann London	Agency Producer
Sergio Lopez	McCann London	Head of Integrated Production
Georgie Rechner	McCann London	Business Director
Kate Douglas	McCann London	Account Director
Christos Cardovillis	McCann London	Account Manager
Thomas Keane	McCann London	Planner

The Campaign

Our idea was inspired by a simple truth – in the UK, one million older people go for over a month without speaking to anyone. We wanted to help change this, and find a way to bring back a sense of community to lonely elderly people. What better way to do this than around arguably the most important symbol of togetherness in family life – the Sunday Roast. Bisto partnered with charity Contact the Elderly to launch Spare Chair Sunday - a project that encouraged families to invite a local older person to their Sunday lunch. A TV and radio campaign drove people to the website (www.bistotogetherproject.com), where volunteer hosts could sign up to offer a spare chair at their table. They were then matched with an older person in their local area. This idea did more than simply bring awareness to a situation, it actually facilitated action.

Campaign Success

We needed families with a space at their table to offer to host a Spare Chair Sunday. So we targeted them with TV, radio and social spots at relevant times - such as dinner time when people were naturally sitting with their own family eating their dinner.   Each communication drove people online to the Bisto Together Project website, where they’d enter their details. They were then matched up with a lonely older person in their local area, and the Spare Chair Sunday was arranged.

Describe the success of the promotion with both client and consumer including some quantifiable results

• Over 5,500 people have signed up, most groups that have taken part are looking to make it a regular occurrence. • The activity reached 2.6 million adults across the country and the charity achieved 63% of its five-year sign-up goal within four months. • The cause grew beyond our initiative, with many more setting up their own lunches and some even telling Bisto the campaign reminded them to see their older relatives more often. • Spare Chair Sunday contributed to Bisto achieving it's highest ever 4 w/e brand share in December at 80.3% and also supported growing the Best brand by 20% in December.

Explain why the method of promotion was most relevant to the product or service

Bisto is a brand that stands for togetherness. In the last two years Bisto has been observing and broadcasting stories that show the importance of people coming together around the table. This campaign set out to actually facilitate togetherness, and we achieved this through inspiring, empowering and enabling real people to actually make it happen. This campaign activation achieved engagement over and above the objectives – but more than that, when the campaign was over, consumers took it upon themselves to continue with the activation ‘unofficially’ – outside of the campaign.

With our target audience being all British families, we needed to create a campaign that would have wide cultural relevance. At the time, the loneliness of the elderly was a big topic and we discovered that in the UK, one million older people go for over a month without speaking to anyone. A generation to whom once, community was everything. And families came together not around the TV, but around the table – the ‘Sunday Roast’ perhaps being the epitome of this. And yet sadly, Bisto research revealed that Sunday was the loneliest day of the week for 1 in 7 over 65s. This presented us with an opportunity to reinstate the tradition of bringing people round the table on Sundays – delivering on our brand ambition to help facilitate togetherness, and our business ambition to re-instate our value around the family table.