Action Against Hunger (Spain) the Sharing Experiment

8/12/2019 Action Against Hunger (Spain) the Sharing Experiment

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Action Against Hunger (Spain): The Sharing Experiment Direct Marketing Association - US

Henry Hoke and Gold, ECHO Awards, 2012


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Action Against Hunger (Spain): The Sharing Experiment

Shackleton

Entry Information

Category: Not-For-ProfitCountry where program ran: Spain

Dates program started/ended: October 2011 May 2012

Product Description:

As part of World Food Day Action, the NGO Against Hunger launched a campaign to raise awareness and funds amongst the

general public concerning the world's hunger problem with particular emphasis on acute child malnutrition, a disease that kills

over 3.5 million children each year.

Advertiser/Client Name: Action Against Hunger (Spain)

Media Channels: Social Networking, TV/Video/Radio, Web Development, Email

Website: http://www.judgingishard.com/campana/echo/experiment

Note: The campaign video accompanying this case study is in Spanish, including discussion of the results. But an English

translation of 'The Sharing Experiment' film can be viewed below (or on YouTube ).

Strategy

Marketplace challenge:

There are two kinds of people in today's world; the haves and the have-nots. Unfortunately a large part of the world's

Title: Action Against Hunger (Spain): The Sharing Experiment Source: Direct Marketing Association - US Issue: Henry Hoke and Gold, ECHO Awards, 2012

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population falls into the second category and desperately depend on the former sharing with them.

As part of World Food Day, Action Against Hunger launched a campaign to raise awareness and funds amongst the general

public concerning the world's hunger problem with particular emphasis on acute child malnutrition, a disease that kills over 3.5

million children each year. Although today we have the means and the knowledge to prevent, diagnose and treat malnutrition,

only 3% of malnourished children manage to get access to treatment.

Target audience:

Both

Primarily men and women between the ages of 30 and 45, urbanites who are interested in lending their support to NGO's.

Size of target audience:

1,000,000+

Marketing strategy:

Action against Hunger wanted to attract donors and members with a campaign on World Food Day concerning the world's

hunger problem with particular emphasis on acute child malnutrition. With a minimum budget, it was essential to reach out to

as many people as possible through the viral video of the experiment.

The key was to maximise awareness amongst Internet users and translate into potential donations, members to mitigate as

much as possible the world's hunger problem.

How could we draw the general public's attention to our cause and make our voice heard? How could we get new members

and donors to join our cause?

By creating a visual metaphor which deals with how the world functions. To do that we conducted a social experiment using

several children between the ages of four and six who were filmed in pairs at snack time, where one of them was given food to

eat, and the other one wasn't.

How did they react? Did they share their food or did the child with no food resign themselves to watching helplessly as the

other child finished off their plate?

The video of the experiment was launched on the Internet to direct user traffic to visit www.experimentocomparte.org , a

website which provided information, raised funds and the general public's awareness about acute child nutrition.

Marketing tactics:

The initiative was announced through the website and the video was disseminated across the Internet with a banner campaign

and mail shots inviting users to the social networks to take part and make donations.

The strategy and insight that shaped the idea was to cause a reflection on the issue, creating a visual metaphor which deals

with how a badly distributed world works.

We decided to work with children to see if an instinct that we believe is innate in all of us is lost as we grow older. The idea


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was to understand how children respond when confronted with scenarios of obvious injustice, challenging them when what is

at stake is their meal.

ACH members & donors received an EMAILING launching The Sharing Experiment that redirected to the web featuring the

experiment.

The PUBLIC RELATIONS strategy was also launched via emailing which contained a press release and campaign materials.

National, internatoinal, industry and charity media were asked to maximise the campaign's reach.

In addition, a SOCIAL MEDIA strategy disseminated the video and the campaign's web motivating users to share the initiative

on social networks.

The campaign included:

1. Emailing campaign

2. Viral video of the Experiment launched in AAH's youtube channel.3. Website featuring the viral video, direct donation and sharing your plate on facebook.

4. PR and Social Media strategy

Creative

Note: The campaign video accompanying this case study below is in Spanish, including discussion of the results. But an

English translation of 'The Sharing Experiment' film can be viewed here on YouTube .

Creative strategy:

The creative strategic solution was to conduct a social experiment with 20 children between the ages of four and six.

We sat them down in pairs at a table with two covered plates in front of them. An adult monitor explained that they could eat

their snack while she went off to find the photographer who was running late for their photo session, leaving the two children

alone in the room together.

When the children lifted the lids off the plates they discovered that only one plate had food on it. The other was empty.

How did the children react? More important perhaps than the results of the experiment itself were to see the children's

reactions given that with any of the two options we could demonstrate something. The experiment was conducted to determine

whether indeed there is a natural instinct in all of us to share and whether we somehow lose it as we get older.

Incredibly, all of the children with food shared their snack with the other child who didn't, teaching us all a very important

lesson.

We rolled out the video of the experiment on the Internet to direct user traffic to www.experimentocomparte.org where users

were encouraged to share via three different channels: direct donation, becoming a member of ACH and donating luncheon

vouchers.

In order to exhaust every possibility to donate money as well as maximising the campaign's viral potential, the website also had

a "share your plate of food on Facebook" option. Through this tool users could share a photograph of any plate of food of their


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choice by sending an SMS message, at a cost of 1.20, which is approximately the cost of daily nutritional treatment for a child

suffering acute malnutrition.

Results

The campaign not only fulfilled but surpassed Action Against Hunger's donation and awareness targets, notching up over one

million visits to Youtube in just one week.

It was also one of the three most tweeted videos the week of its launch and was the most viewed and appraised video on

Youtube in October.

The experiment was seen in over 180 countries (Youtube Analytics).

Due to its success, the International Network of Action Against Hunger (AAF) decided to launch the campaign (The Sharing

Experiment, Test du Partage) in England, United States, France and Canada simultaneously.

The experiment starred on the Dutch documentary series about 'Liberty, Equality and Fraternity' broadcasted on national

public television in the Netherlands.

The experiment featured in Channel 5, London in 'The Wright Stuff' in the 'Topical Debate' with Matthew Wright and his

panelists

Yahoo News called it 'The children's experiment that shook up the Internet.'

Total Cost:

Rollout 100,000-250,000

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Action Against Hunger (Spain) the Sharing Experiment