The Campaign

We crafted complete meals around a single grain of rice to illustrate just how precious each grain is in the eyes of a hungry person. Collaborating with several popular restaurants, we worked with their chefs to craft these single-grain meals out of actual ingredients, replicating some of Singapore’s most popular dishes. From actual dishes to replicas for display, and eventually images of the dishes used on placemats, postcards, posters and social media, they all came with a simple message: just as a single grain of rice is precious, so is the smallest donation.

Creative Execution

The activation phase of the project consisted of creating the single-grain dishes themselves. We took actual, full-sized dishes, extracted one grain of rice, and then sliced everything else to scale to match that single grain. They were then plated and served in the manner the actual dishes would have been. In participating restaurants, these dishes were served to their clientele, followed by an explanation of the idea by a Red Cross volunteer. Reactions were recorded and turned into videos shared over social media. The next phase saw us craft these meals in the studio, shoot them, and then use them in key visuals for placemats, collectible postcards, posters and social media posts, to further propagate the message. Physical donation boxes were set up at participating restaurants and at point of sale accompanying our scale replicas and collateral. Online, all communications pointed to the Red Cross website’s donation link.

At the time of writing, the Red Cross has collected enough funds to enable it to distribute 91,155kg of rice, benefitting 25,900 individuals nationwide. Hard results aside, anecdotal evidence suggests an increase in awareness of the existence of marginalised (and largely invisible) Singaporeans in need of help, and the message is being spread online inspired by both the beauty, elegance and quirkiness of these single-grain meals and the real moral message behind them. Donations continue to pour in both via collection boxes in situ and online.

This idea strategically uses media to directly interact with the consumer. They were literally served the idea at restaurants, and the initial wave of live responses were recorded on video and shared via social media, triggering the wider-reaching follow-through. No matter which medium you interacted with, whether it was the actual single-grain meals themselves, or their replicas after the initial activation, or the placemats, postcards, posters and social media posts they appeared on, they linked directly to a physical collection box or pointed to an online donation facility on the Red Cross website.

Insights, Strategy and the Idea

We used food because it is one of Singaporeans' biggest passion points. With interesting location placements as key contact points to target our audiences, driving the message straight to them how important a single grain is to the less privileged. The reactions garnered ranged from surprise to delight. The single-grain meals disarmed everyone from traditional family patriarchs to young, activist millennials, gaining the idea traction and momentum across the target audience–simply, all able Singaporeans. It got the conversation started, and the subsequent donations, big and micro, coming in.