At the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity 2019, a panel discussion was held to talk about the problem of hunger in our world today. Three million children die of hunger every year, and according to David Beasly, the executive director of the United Nations World Food Program (WFP), a child dies of hunger every five seconds.
The four people who were present at the panel were Beasly himself; Sir John Hegarty, an advertising executive and a recipient of the Inaugural The Lion of St. Mark award; Corrine Fleischer, the WFP country director in Syria; David Beasly; and Terry Savage, the former Cannes Lions chairman. They discussed how creativity impacts the fight for world hunger in relation to the “Feed Our Future” cinema campaign Global Cinema Advertising Association (SAWA) for WFP.
Because of this campaign, there was a 38% increase in the downloads of the Share the Meal app by WFP, 60% increase in revenue, and a 40% increase in branding in just one year resulting in one million children getting two meals a day.
Hegarty, the man who conceived of the “Feed Our Future” advertisement, said about the campaign: “With charity, what you’re doing is you’re trying to create empathy. You’re going into somebody’s consciousness in different ways but you still have to use the tools that advertising has taught you: be surprising, don’t be like everybody else, be different, create something lasting but ultimately, what you’re trying to do is to create empathy.”
The latest 60-second film for the “Feed Our Future” campaign premiered at the talk. It was once again created by Hegarty. In the video, children sing to “How Can I Tell You” by Cat Stevens. One by one, the children disappear. The video then closes with a sobering fact, “Every year 3 million children die of hunger. Help keep their voices alive.”
