The Garage Fights World Hunger With 'Feed Our Future' Campaign

It's coming up to lunchtime. Your stomach's probably growling and you're tossing up between a Pret chicken salad or an Itsu bento box. 

But before making your customary dramatic announcement - 'I'm starving!' - spare a thought for the 821 million people, roughly one in nine of the global population, who go to bed on an empty stomach every night.

To raise awareness of the continuing problem and help fight worldwide hunger, the Global Cinema Advertising Association, SAWA, and the United Nations World Food Programme have teamed up with creative shop The Garage Soho on a new global advertising campaign, Feed Our Future.

Rather than the now-familiar images of starving, skeletal children - images to which most of us have, sadly, become desensitised - the 60-second cinema ad [above], written and creative directed by The Garage's founder, Sir John Hegarty, takes a different tack by highlighting the potential that is lost every time a child dies of hunger.  

Directed by Lynne Ramsay through Somesuch, the spot opens on a bustling press conference, with journalists jostling and vying to interview 'Miriam', the recipient of a breakthrough medical research award. Flashbulbs pop and microphones bristle as the young woman takes to the stage. Yet, as the film progresses, it becomes clear that the miraculous discovery was never made - and that Miriam actually died of hunger when she was eight years old.  

The film, which will play in cinemas in over 25 countries from today [24 September 2018] closes by encouraging viewers to download WFP’s ShareTheMeal app, a fundraising tool which enables users to feed a child with just a tap on their device. 

“The creative challenge here is to find a way of engaging the audience without resorting to endless images of starving children" - Sir John Hegarty 

As part of the Cannes Lions ‘Hack for Good’, a unique Facebook Messenger integration has also been created for the ad - an in-cinema first for the app - which allows viewers to scan or search for the ShareTheMeal Messenger bot, and find out more details about Miriam and her story.

“The creative challenge here is to find a way of engaging the audience without resorting to endless images of starving children. Creating empathy by reminding the viewer that when a child dies, we all lose,” said Sir John Hegarty. "There's nothing like the big screen for building empathy and fame. The Feed Our Future cinema spot is the first important step in getting the public to download the ShareTheMeal app.” 

To tease the launch of the campaign film, short social films featuring celebrity supporters such as actor Daniel Brühl [above] and Bollywood star Sonam Kapoor, talking about Miriam's fictional achievement, have been running across Facebook and Instagram.  

For more information about the campaign and to get involved, visit Feed Our Future.