Celebrity chef Manu Feildel and children’s charity Plan launch campaign via Visual Jazz Isobar
Digital creative agency, Visual Jazz Isobar, has teamed together with the Australian arm of international children’s charity, Plan, to launch a campaign today with a little difference.
While it’s not unique to see a celebrity as the face of a charity campaign, it is unusual to find a television chef in a part of the world where 18 million people don’t have enough to eat. However when reports came out in June that more than 1.5 million children under the age of five across West Africa were without food, celebrity chef and father Manu Feildel boarded a plane within a few weeks to Niger, to learn firsthand about the urgent crisis and to find out what Australians could do to help.
After spending two weeks in the poorest place in the world, battling 55 degree heat with New Idea’s editor in chief Kim Wilson, Melbourne filmmaker Chris Phillips and photographer Igor Sapina, Feildel has returned to Australia with plenty to share as part of the Stop The Hunger campaign for Plan.
Hitting new stands today is a three page New Idea story which coincides with the launch of a campaign website housing videos, photos and information about the trip and situation in West Africa – all built by Visual Jazz Isobar in less than a week and at no cost to Plan.
Tomorrow, Stage 2 of the campaign will be released, with Feildel scheduled to appear on Channel Seven’s Sunrise program to speak about the journey. Following that, various other promotional activities will be staged over the coming weeks along with the release of content via the website, including behind the scenes video footage of the ever enthusiastic Frenchman winning hearts all over West Africa.
Ben Holgate, Plan’s director of marketing thanked the team that had pulled off the entire campaign, including the trip, in less than two months and commended Feildel on his involvement stating the response so far from the public, media and of course the children in West Africa, had been overwhelming.
2 Comments
what an amazing video! well done Plan Australia and Manu – looks like a great campaign.
Any efforts to help those less fortunate to us in Australia should always be applauded, of course.
But given that I’ve not seen ANY publicity around this tour other than here and in New Idea (an article as much about Manu & his son as the starving children) I have to be sceptical.
What exactly has been the “overwhelming” response been in terms of meals fed to these poor people – more than the cost to send a celeb chef, his partner AND child for two weeks to Africa via Paris, followed by a film crew and magazine crew ? Why would his partner & child go – it’s not a holiday for goodness sake. And the kid wasn’t even there for more than a few days of the trip, according to the article (hence the girlfriend, I guess, babysitter).
Conservatively that must have cost – what ? $50k ? $100k ? That’s a hell of a lot of sponsorship dollars Plan must recoup.
Explanation please.