Action Against Hunger: GIVE YOUR CALORIES

Credits & Description:

Advertiser: ACTION AGAINST HUNGER
Agency: HAPPINESS BRUSSELS, BIG ON RESULTS
Category: Best Use of Digital PR
Advertising campaign: GIVE YOUR CALORIES
Offline Producer: Bart Vande Maele (Happiness Brussels)
Graphic Designer/Flow Developers: Daniel Nino (Happiness Brussels)
Concept Provider: Arnaud Bailly (Happiness Brussels)
Content/Strategic Planner: Joris Joosten (Happiness Brussels)
Executive Creative Management: Karen Corrigan (Happiness Brussels)
Consultants: Peter Ampe (Happiness Brussels)
Digital Strategy Manager: Maarten Breda (Happiness Brussels)
Concept Provider: Ross Mccurrach (Happiness Brussels)
Online Producer: Stijn Van Velthoven (Happiness Brussels)
Concept Provider: Cecilia Azcarate Isturiz (Happiness Brussels)
Offline Producer: Sophie Gunsbourgh (Happiness Brussels)
Film Director/Photography: Bob Jeusette (Happiness Brussels)
Executive Creative Management: Dominique Van Doormaal (Happiness Brussels)
Consultants: Isabel Peeters (Happiness Brussels)
Graphic Designer/Flow Developers: Jeremy Vandenbosch (Happiness Brussels)
: Sebastiaan Weyler (Bliss Interactive/Mobile)

Client Brief Or Objective
We wanted to help Action Against Hunger receive the needed funds, but also boost their image and establish them as one of the key organizations fighting hunger in the world. To do so, we needed to target as many people as possible.

Campaign Description
Action Against Hunger is a non-profit organization committed to ending world hunger. As their yearly fundraising event was cancelled, due to Hurricane Sandy in 2012, which landed when the event was due to proceed, they were confronted with a huge loss in possible donations. We came up with a solution to make people donate to help restore the food balance in the world, and to make up for the donations they didn’t get due to Hurricane Sandy. Our goal was to help Action Against Hunger receive the needed funds, but also boost their image and establish them as one of the key organizations fighting hunger in the world. So we created the Give Your Calories app, an app that lets you scan food via image recognition or barcode recognition, and automatically calculates and converts these calorific values into dollar values, which you can then choose to be donated in the app to do your bit for restoring the world’s food balance. The software recognizes certain items like barcodes, logo’s and packages and presets the amount of calories for recognized items. Users can also select from an auto-suggested list. There are several types of donations, all linked to the number of calories. The checkout happens via PayPal. The app serves both as a means to generate direct funds, but also as a PR-tool for Action Against Hunger. Thanks to a custom made spreading and seeding plan, the app travelled the world and made sure Action Against Hunger is now a top of mind NGO.

Relevancy
Action Against Hunger is a non-profit organization committed to ending world hunger. As their yearly fundraising event was cancelled, due to Hurricane Sandy in 2012, which landed when the event was due to proceed, they were confronted with a huge loss in possible donations. We came up with a solution to make people donate to help restore the food balance in the world, and to make up for the donations they didn’t get due to Hurricane Sandy.

Execution
The PR-Approach was built up into 3 steps:Step1: Launch the app with Epic Meal TimeWe started with Top 10 Youtube Channel EpicMealTime as a media partner, and created a special EMT episode with them. They became the first Give Your Calories Givers. EMT’s mind-boggling culinary creation often surpass the recommended weekly caloric intake for a single individual ! The show racked up a staggering 180 000 calories using the app.Step2: Top down PR approach:1.Opinion-makers: individual approach of 250 identified key-opinion leaders2.Influencers: Target key influential journalists and bloggers within strategic communities (technology, design and innovation, good causes, marketing)3.Followers: massive spread on social networks

Strategy
We created the Give Your Calories app, an app that lets you scan food via image recognition or barcode recognition, and automatically calculates and converts these calorific values into dollar values, which you can then choose to be donated in the app to do your bit for restoring the world’s food balance. We collaborated with 'Epic Meal Time' the number one online cooking show, with over 4,500,000 subscribers on Youtube, whose specialty is making huge calorie packed meals. For the launch of Give Your Calories they made a special episode of their online cooking show entirely devoted to the app. We launched the app, together with the 'Epic Meal Time' video, via a ‘cascade’ PR communications plan and real-time researched leaders, influencers and followers both in professional and citizen journalists.

Effectiveness
The special episode of Epic Meal Time was viewed over 825,000 times and was spread on major blogs and news sources. The comments and likes were hugely favourable, at time of entry 25,000 likes to 500 dislikes, so even Epic Meal Time, normally slandered for food waste, was given a pat on the back by their followers for doing good. Key comments were “it’s like Instagram but better”. With a social reach of over 5,000,000 impressions the campaign was very quickly spread and shared by key influencers, pushing the donations up, but essentially pushing awareness of the Action Against Hunger’s work on the field, making it the top of mind food charity, to a whole new social group, pushed to give for the first time, in a way relevant to them. Results 10 days after the launch of the application:•Downloads: 8,382•Calories donated: 194,819•Epic Meal Time Views: 825,476•Awareness: the idea appeared on major blogs and in online and offline media. MashableElleNew Media RockstarsFrequencyAll techie NewsDigitalSpyDigital Age TimeWorld News and WireSocial Media Reach: 5,600,000