SecondBite launches national campaign to raise awareness about ending food waste and hunger via Collins + Partners and OMD

SecondBite, in collaboration with creative agency Collins + Partners and media agency OMD, has launched a campaign to raise awareness on food rescue to help Australians in need.

SecondBite rescues fresh and nutritious food that would otherwise go to waste and distributes it free of charge to over 1000 charities nationwide – thus reducing carbon emissions and reducing the food costs of charities. SecondBite is in its 15th year and its major source of food is via its national partnership with Coles. Last year alone Secondbite delivered the food for over 50 million individual meals.

Up to 25% of the food we produce in Australia goes to waste, while 20% of Australian’s experienced food insecurity in the last year. The goal of this campaign is to grow engagement with business and government and expand the scale and effectiveness of food rescue. Also, there is a constant need to grow the donation base since SecondBite’s service is provided 100% free to charities and people in need.

Says Julian Martin, chairman, SecondBite: “There is no better time to explain the brilliance of food rescue as a sustainable way of helping people in need. We hope this awareness campaign will lead to more effective corporate, philanthropic and government partnerships. We aim to accelerate the development of an improved national system of quality food waste collection and distribution to people in need. The next few years will be especially tough for many Australians and we all need to gear up to support a growing number of people struggling to afford and access good food. We are incredibly indebted to the creative and media organisations who have created this campaign probono and donated such amazing media space.”

Says Simon Collins, founder of Collins + Partners: “I collaborated with Behaviour Change’s Paul Fishlock on this project. The biggest creative challenges facing us was very category specific: how to talk about Australians being wasteful and Australians being hungry without sounding judgmental. After all, though well established in Victoria, SB is not a well-known brand in NSW, so this would be effectively a launch campaign, and it’s hard to make anyone warm to an unfamiliar brand if the advertising makes them feel guilty. Using toddlers spilling food solved this problem; even though they’re wasting food we don’t blame them, and even though most of it’s not getting in their mouths we know that their frustration isn’t serious. Having engaged the audience emotionally in this way, the ad then had to get very logical very quickly in terms of describing the way SB addresses these two parallel problems. The use of the jigsaw device isn’t just a neat mnemonic; it also reflects the cleverness of SB’s methodology; the symbiotic relationship it creates between two negatives to deliver one positive. Budget was also a problem, of course, with SB being a charity, but Covid restrictions precluded the shooting of original footage anyway, so it was a no-brainer to look for a concept using stock footage, and maybe tie it up with animation, which is what the jigsaw footage actually is – however realistic it may look. With the campaign revolving on two such powerful and complimentary visual concepts, it was very easy to adapt it to print and digital media.”

Says Antonia Glezakos, managing partner, OMD Melbourne: “As media agency for both Coles and SecondBite, we are delighted to come on board and support SecondBite in raising awareness of its work to solve both food insecurity and food waste. We would like to thank our media partners, as without their support this campaign would not be possible.”

The national multi-channel campaign will commence on October 26 across television, radio, outdoor, press, digital and social channels.

SecondBite
Julian Martin and Belinda Rowe
Collins + Partners – Creative agency
Simon Collins – Creative Director, writer
Paul Fishlock – writer
Albert Jantong – Art Director
Steve Lund – TV Producer
OMD Australia – Media agency
Antonia Glezakos – Managing Partner
Carolyn McGookin – Business Director
Jade Ramsey – Trading Manager
Mira Strbac Low – Trader