The challenge

Royal Voluntary Service (RVS) is a  UK national charity that provides a lifeline to people (clients) who need them in communities and the NHS.

Among many services their volunteers provide lunch clubs in local areas where they bring clients together to enjoy a healthy meal and a chat. As one in five people aged over 70 eats all their meals alone, this is a vital service. RVS holds nearly 80 lunch clubs across the country, serving more than 50,000 meals a year. They needed more people to volunteer.

The campaign needed to celebrate the good work the existing volunteers were doing and drive social engagement.

A dash of science

Incorporating humour into such campaigns has proven effective according to extensive research. Humour not only creates positive brand associations but also enhances recall, reduces resistance to persuasion, and boosts the likelihood of content being shared as social currency.

Humour is not a tool that should be used in every film production; in some cases, too much emotion or entertainment can detract the viewer from the brand. Find out more about taking emotion too far.

What we did

Having worked with RVS on multiple projects, we already understood the key personality traits of the charity. The challenge was understanding the new key target and how to communicate with them. We did this by understanding their key personality traits and working out the most effective way for the two personalities to build a relationship. We then told them a story.

The Challenges

Third City wanted to tell the story of the spirit of the lunch clubs and came up with the idea of creating a parody of the many cooking programmes out there. Using parody created the path of least resistance for the viewer.

This created multiple challenges, and most of them were time-related. The first being that these types of shows are about an hour long, and this content needed to be could be consumed quickly. The second was that there was a very short window to film in. This was because the clients of RVS enjoyed their weekly routines. The piece was filmed in real-time which provided the team with a window of 2.5 hours to get everything.

Some of the team already had some experience working on cooking shows which meant that the formats and clichés were easier to work into a concentrated version of a recognisable cookery show. This was also helped by having William Sitwell host it.

The second challenge was logistical – multiple crews avoiding each other’s shots in a tiny space on a very, very hot day.  The RVS volunteer’s patience was incredible as the kitchen was asked to create versions of the dishes fast enough for the food stylist, Dominque, to style them. The words “they will just get up and leave when they’ve finished their pudding” were constantly rattling around the production crew’s heads.

What we ended up with was a joy. The spirit of the volunteers is infectious, making the whole day a lot of fun.

The results

The end result was immensely gratifying. The infectious spirit of the volunteers infused the entire day with joy. The film gained significant traction, reaching over half a million people on Facebook alone. The campaign, labeled #Cooking4ACrowd, amassed over 600k views on Twitter and drove more than 18k website visits. With an expansive coverage across social media, print, and radio, the campaign reached a staggering 31 million individuals.

Subsequently, two additional pieces were commissioned: “The Accidental Volunteer” featuring Rachel Riley, and “The Visit” starring Wayne Sleep.