Background:

Foodbank WA is Australia’s largest food relief organisation. Their team is dedicated to feeding people in need, no matter their situation, to end hunger in Australia.

Brief:

Increase awareness of food insecurity, drive donations and bring hope to hungry Western Australians. For this campaign, we needed to take up this challenge at Christmas – a time when many charities were competing for donations.

Objectives:

To raise donations to help feed Western Australians facing food insecurity.

Think of the last time you were hungry.

Did it feel like a creature grumbling in your tummy?

That feeling is caused by the hunger hormone ghrelin. You can’t see it, but you can feel it, and the more ghrelin released, the hungrier we feel.

Introducing The Hunger Ghrelins: The hunger hormones feeding hungry kids.

This is an educational, entertaining, and donation-driving campaign that brought conversations about the devastating physical and psychological effects of gnawing hunger out into the open.

We created a new toy, The Hunger Ghrelins, encouraging people to take the fight against hunger into their hands. This modelling dough kit could be purchased in the lead-up to Christmas. It was sold in supermarkets across WA and supported by OOH, radio, POS and a bespoke website.

Our target audience was broad: Western Australians who could afford to spare a few dollars for Foodbank WA at Christmas.

Every campaign we create for Foodbank WA aims to make hunger feel real for those who have never experienced it, so driving both understanding and donations.

But being a charity organisation reliant on fundraising, Foodbank WA did not have the luxury of a big budget or extensive time.

Without a traditional media plan, Foodbank WA needed an idea that would drive DONATION, CREATION, and ACTIVATION across multiple media platforms without relying on spend.

The Hunger Ghrelins toy allowed us to step outside of the traditional charity approaches and mediums, and instead to interrupt potential donors at the point they were purchasing their own food.

The campaign launched with an e-commerce microsite, supported by OLV, radio, OOH, bus-backs, social media and a PR campaign picked up by news publications, mummy-bloggers and politicians.

A partnership with major supermarket chain, IGA, saw The Hunger Ghrelins kits stocked in 11 stores across WA. Perth’s premier educational science toy store, Scitech, also stocked the kits, with 100% of sales going to Foodbank WA.

Several hands-on activations were run in the lead-up to Christmas to amplify the campaign. Here West Aussies were encouraged to make their own Hunger Ghrelins using the modelling clay and googly eyes kit, and importantly, share their creations on socials. Around the activations, QR codes linked to the microsite to maximise donation opportunities.

Activations ran across WA in shopping centres of retail groups Hawaiian and Vicinity, plus in four corporate building foyers in Perth’s CBD, in partnership with Dexus, Australia’s leading commercial real estate group.

The Hunger Ghrelins campaign results have been beyond expectation.

Business impact:

As with any fundraising campaign for Foodbank WA, the most important objective is raising money to feed the hungry. The Hunger Ghrelins allowed Foodbank WA to provide 1.5million meals to Western Australians over the campaign period.

This was a 36% increase in donated meals from the previous year.

Achievement against brief:

The campaign helped to raise awareness of the plight of food-insecure Western Australians with an estimated potential reach of 15.8 million people (Cannings Purple PR). Given the population of Western Australia is only 2.7 million, The Hunger Ghrelins’ message spread far and wide.

The campaign produced a 3188% return on investment for Foodbank WA, on a total campaign budget of AUD $22,808.