In Dubai in the United Arab Emirates during Ramadan, the month of fasting, people have spotted empty plates on cars driving down streets and parked in malls as well as in parking lots across the city. Turns out, it has all been for a cause.
Every year, 800 million people suffer from hunger globally. And every year, the hungry go unnoticed by many. With this troubling insight in mind, this year during the holy month, to raise awareness about the millions of empty plates that often go unnoticed, the Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum Global Initiatives has launched the “1 Billion Meals” initiative to get 1 billion meals to underprivileged families across the Middle East, Africa, and South Asia.
This initiative is supported by the United Nations’ World Food Programme (WFP) and aims to provide the equivalent of 1 billion meals to less fortunate people such as refugees, displaced persons, and those affected by humanitarian crises and natural disasters.
To bring awareness to the cause of empty plates, Publicis Groupe and Saatchi & Saatchi UAE noticed how people across the UAE love having unique numbers on their car plates. Those car plates attract attention and user-generated content on social media.
These same uniquely numbered car plates that people notice and pay attention to have been transformed into empty car plates, seen across popular hotspots and streets, to get people to notice the empty plates around the world too. Empty plates on cars across town took over the streets of Dubai, serving as the driving force to get the nation talking about the empty plates that truly matter.
These empty plates were part of a guerrilla campaign to draw attention to the recently launched Most Noble Number Charity Auction where affluent audiences will bid for unique number plates, with the bid amounts going to help stop hunger in its tracks with the money raised.
Every dirham raised in the auction will mean one meal provided. And in doing so, each plate sold in the auction has the power to fill millions of empty plates worldwide.
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The client behind ‘Empty Plates’ is the UAE Government Media Office, while the campaign is created by Publicis Groupe and Saatchi & Saatchi UAE.