Businessman in pinstripe suit does African mother's work in UN food agency ad

From a businessman in a pinstripe suit pounding food with a crying baby strapped to his back to the fact that the cost of a dessert in a posh restaurant could feed someone in the developing world for a month, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) is launching a new ad campaign to win the hearts and minds of Europe.

Working with the London office of Leagas Delaney, WFP has helped to produce three unique commercials that bring home the reality of hunger to build public empathy in Europe for the more than 850 million people who still go hungry at a time of clear abundance of food worldwide and a growing epidemic of obesity.

The first commercial to appear on television, "Donate a dessert", will encourage viewers to think about hunger when they eat out. In a moving collage of voices, African adults and children ask for a sophisticated dessert they might find at an expensive restaurant. The viewer is asked to donate the dessert's cost to WFP.

The three commercials each take a different look at hunger, examining not just how it affects real people in Africa but also imagining what it would be like for someone from a comfortable, western background to experience the pain of hunger for the very first time.

The second is based on real stories of how people in Africa cope with hunger. It shows a woman collecting stones which she then boils in a pan in front of her children until they fall asleep. Before it was brought to life on film by Leagas Delaney, this real story was gathered by a WFP worker in southern Sudan who was told it is a traditional way of getting children to sleep during the hunger season.

In the third advert, a businessman dressed in a pinstripe suit is shown struggling to cope with the daily challenges that African women face across their continent on a daily basis. The "businessman" is seen pounding food in a village with a crying baby strapped to his back and then shown dragging a sack of food aid back to his home.

The film ends by posing the question, "852 million people live like this. Could you?"

Leagas Delaney and the film production company, Partizan, donated their services free of charge to produce the adverts that were all shot on location in Kenya. British Airways donated the cost of flights to carry the film production crew from London to Nairobi and back again.

"This donation of creative expertise and talent from a top advertising agency shows how effective a role the private sector can play in supporting humanitarian work," Neil Gallagher, Director of Communications for WFP, said.

The actor John Hurt gave his time to provide the voiceover for two of the adverts, while the singer and composer Damon Albarn gave permission for one of his musical compositions to be used in another.

WFP is searching for television channels and other visual media, such as cinema chains, that will carry the advertisements on a pro bono basis. The "donate a dessert" advert has already been picked up by international cable and satellite channels and is due to start running in December.

The commercials are available in 30 second and one minute formats and will be translated into a number of different languages for international audiences.