Why is this work relevant for Media?

The charity industry in New Zealand is heavily saturated and Kiwis had become immune to seeing sad images of hungry-looking children. With a very small budget and the need to make a big impact we couldn't rely on a typical charity ad and traditional media for our campaign to be seen. We knew our media strategy needed to be different. So we exploited NZers love of cooking, by turning our message into recipes and instructional cooking videos. Then we placed these recipes everywhere New Zealanders look for cooking inspiration. Inspiring them to donate to KidsCan instead.

Background

New Zealand has one of the highest child poverty rates in the OCED, making accessing enough food to feed the family a daily challenge for many Kiwis. KidsCan is a charity that was set up to feed children living in hardship, but with thousands of families waiting for their help, they were in need of help themselves. The purpose of this campaign was to raise donations so that KidsCan could feed more disadvantaged New Zealand children.

Describe the creative idea / insights (30% of vote)

Many of the families who were in need of KidsCan's help had heartbreaking stories of the kinds of meals they would make to feed their families. So we teamed up with four of New Zealand’s top celebrity chefs and cooking influencers to turn these stories into recipes. Then we brought each recipe to life in a series of instructional cooking show style videos, printed recipes, and recipe boxes. Through research, we found all places New Zealanders go to look for recipes, as well as the most popular search terms and hashtags they use when they're seeking out cooking inspiration. So that every time people were deciding what to cook for their families, they were inspired to help feed someone else's as well.

Describe the strategy (20% of vote)

NZ may have one of the highest child food insecurity rates, but we are also a nation of foodies. Some of our most followed celebrities and social media influencers are chefs, our most popular websites, blogs, social media accounts, google searches and hashtags are food and recipe related and one of our favourite pastimes is cooking. So, we exploited this obsession by making sure our recipes showed up in all the right places shocking the 'haves' into action by showing them what the 'have nots' would be eating - right when they were deciding what to cook for their own families.

Describe the execution (20% of vote)

All the videos were created in the same cooking show style you would expect to see from our four famous chefs and placed everywhere you would expect to see and of their other cooking videos. From the chef's own social channels through to Pinterest, Instagram, youtube, google search, foodie websites, blogs, facebook pages and magazines. Through the use of relevant popular search words and hashtags, the videos popped up whenever and wherever Kiwis looked for recipes to feed their own families. The print ads ran in the recipe sections of popular NZ lifestyle magazines. The recipe boxes were used as a DM piece, to get the attention of social media influencers and the media. And finally, we used PR and editorial to legitimise the campaign by telling the true stories of the families behind our recipes.

List the results (30% of vote)

Our campaign reached over 2.2 million people (in a country with a population of only 4.9 million) and raising enough donations for more than 200,000 meals.