Auckland City Mission and 99 hope to raise awareness about the growing food crisis in Auckland with a hard-hitting ad about living below the breadline.
In creating the campaign, 99 worked with an economist to learn Auckland’s working poor have only $6.43 to spend on dinner every night after the cost of living in the city are broken down.
To contextualise that, the ad watches as a single parent and her two children sit down at the table for dinner while the food before them vanishes below the breadline. The $6.43 removes the meat and vegetables, leaving bread and butter.
Along with the image comes a call to action to ‘raise the breadline for Auckland families’.
“People are aware that there are a lot of families struggling to get by in this country, particularly among the working poor. But we wanted to help Aucklanders empathise by presenting the subject in a much more understandable way,” says 99 executive director Mick Stalker.
Alongside 99, Zenith Media and media partners have seen the campaign be integrated across out of home, bus backs, radio, online and TV, prompting people to donate and help raise the breadline.
The campaign landing page also breaks down what the harsh financial reality for families living below the breadline looks like, using figures from economist Alan Johnson.
Auckland City Mission CEO Chris Farrelly says it’s working with families around both temporary food solutions and longer-term solutions such as addressing structural causes of poverty which leads to food insecurity.
“Putting food on the table is one thing, but putting nutritious, well-balanced food needed to stay healthy is another. I think this is an important, relevant and necessary conversation we should be having, as the largest city in the country, with many working poor. Especially considering the massive increase in demand for food parcels we’ve seen this year.”
