Cannes Young Lions

The Ask

Create a $200k digital campaign to drive small-dollar donations, engagement, and viral visibility among Gen Z and Millennials for WhyHunger’s 40th annual Hungerthon, a six-week fall fundraising window. Leverage new media partners to break through the noise and inspire action.

The Set Up

Background: Hungerthon 2025 is an opportunity to engage new, socially conscious audiences while deepening existing support for WhyHunger’s mission.

Insight: Gen Z and Millenials spend an average over $5,000 a year on food while sharing food content daily. By connecting their habits to real-world impact, we can turn their feeds into a powerful tool for feeding their community.

Strategy: To reach Gen Z and Millenials, we need a fresh approach that turns everyday moments into meaningful impact– amplifying our presence, driving engagement, and increasing donations.

Creative Idea: We’ll show the real value of every meal. Through a simple, but powerful AI filter, we'll help our audience recognize their spending habits and how their everyday choices can drive extraordinary change in the fight against hunger.

Users snap a picture of their food with our filter, which translates its monetary cost into how many meals WhyHunger could provide to those in need. With one tap, users can donate to WhyHunger and help feed their community.

Sponsored

Our influencer partners, like food blogger Rachel Kirkconnell, will spark the Community Feeds movement by introducing the AI filter through an Add Yours template. They’ll build initial buzz and rally their digital communities by showing the big impact small dollars can make to feed real ones.

User-Generated Content

Influencers will encourage followers to use their feeds to help their communities by applying the filter, sharing their impact, and inspiring others to give, fully igniting the movement.

Brand Partnership

We’ll partner with Too Good To Go, an app that reduces food waste by connecting users with surplus food from local businesses, who will match donations to provide Surprise Bags to the community.

The Write-Up

Background: After 40 years, WhyHunger’s annual Hungerthon fundraiser remains a powerful tool in the fight against hunger. But, in today’s digital-first world, driving donations requires new strategies. The challenge is not just cutting through the noise, but converting digital engagement into real impact among a new, younger audience. This campaign must expand WhyHunger’s donor base, increase small-dollar contributions, and reshape the conversation around hunger, all while making the brand more visible and relevant than ever.

Insight & Creative Idea: Nearly 60% of social media users who interact with nonprofits end up making a donation. Our socially conscious audience is already eager to give, so we’ll meet them in the familiar digital spaces they command. With Gen Z and Millenials spending over $5,000 annually on food and 69% of them regularly sharing meal pics, food is an intrinsic part of their lifestyle. So, here’s some food for thought: why not harness that passion and show them how to feed their communities right from their social feeds?

Strategy: To drive action, we will connect with our audience where they naturally engage. With 86% of Gen Z on TikTok and 59% of Millennials on Instagram, these platforms offer a direct line to socially aware & engaged users. We’ll partner with Too Good To Go, a brand with 100 million registered users and a shared mission of reducing food waste and improving food security, to expand our reach and credibility. By combining social engagement with a trusted partner, we create a seamless pathway from awareness to action. This approach sets the stage for our creative idea: Community Feeds- turning food content into a catalyst for change and a way to feed those in need.

Execution: Community Feeds will be more than just a moment– it will ignite a movement. To drive visibility, 30% of the budget will be dedicated to partner influencers, who will launch the campaign at the start of the six-week fundraising period and rally their digital communities to take action. Another 40% will fund the development of the AI filter and engage our target audience across Instagram and Tiktok, sparking a viral trend. The remaining 30% will support our partnership with Too Good To Go, matching contributions and perpetuating our shared missions on a national scale. Every activation point is designed to elicit small-dollar donations– because when we come together through our feeds, we can feed real communities.

The Impact

“Community Feeds” was submitted in competition against 500+ creative teams for a spot on Team USA at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.

Our campaign received ample praise and recognition, earning us the opportunity to present it to our agency at a global all-staff meeting. Beyond that, this work inspires boundary-pushing ideas for client work, especially as AI is rapidly reshaping creative potential and the digital landscape.