Donate Your Creativity for Good... and a Nice Lunch
Food for Thought is a new social initiative that invites agency folk to donate their skills to help a charity, in exchange for a nice lunch.
The initiative successfully piloted this summer at sponsor agencies Poke and Publicis London. The official launch will take place on November 23rd at the same agencies and will be supporting Critically Endangered Socks, a social business that aims to protect the world’s most critically endangered animals by selling socks.
Food for Thought is run by founder and creative Marcella Tarable, strategist Sina Hegny, and account director Saffron Clague.
Best described as a sprint-hack-lunch, agencies can apply for Food for Thought to come into their agency during a lunch break. Agency folk donate their skills (and lunch break) to crack a brief for a charity or social business in exchange for a delicious meal. The charity will be chosen depending on the agency skillset. The brief can range from developing campaign concepts, strategy advice to copywriting or design.
The event starts with an introduction of the lunch partners and a brief before everyone starts brainstorming the right recipe. In the second part of the event everyone cooks up ideas for the charity to take-away at the end of the event. The aim is that by the end of the event, the charity is armed with all of the necessary tools it needs to bring the idea to life.
Founder Marcella Tarable explains how the idea came about: “As an advertising creative, I’ve always had an appetite for ‘changing the world’. But I was using my weekends or holidays to go to hackathons. At the same time, I was spending my lunch breaks glued to my desk, watching stupid videos or catching up on work.”
Too many cat compilations later, Marcella had an idea.
What if she brought together talented agency people (without asking them to take time off work) and offer them a great meal in exchange for their skills to help charities and social enterprises to reach their goals.
“I’ve had the luck to meet some amazing people along the way who are helping me make this dream a reality. I’m so excited about the potential of this initiative and hope that other agencies will be inspired to sign up,” she says.
A Food for Thought lunch is a fun way to take a break from the day to day, work on exciting briefs with people from different departments and why not, enjoying a nice free meal. Good food, good people, good causes – the perfect recipe for making a difference.
If you’d like your agency to get involved or you’d like to collaborate, please send an email to hello@foodforthought.space or visit www.foodforthought.space.
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