The Brief

Charity Send a Cow helps families in Africa break free from poverty.  It launched a ‘Break… Fast Appeal’ to raise awareness of the importance of breakfast in the helping African children get a good education and break free from poverty.  The fundraising target was £500,000, with every £1 being matched by the government if the target was hit by a deadline. Cow was asked to develop a creative campaign for the appeal. Yes we’d have to get coverage and social media engagement, but also drive donations.

The Big Idea

Breakfast is not just the most important meal of the day, but the most important meal of all mankind.

What if Einstein hadn’t had breakfast the day he cracked the theory of relativity?  And what if there are countless children in Africa with the potential to be the next Einstein? But without a decent breakfast to help them realise their true potential, we’ll never know. 

Asking these questions led us to our idea. We created ‘The Most Important Meals Of Their Lives’: the first cookery book containing the actual breakfasts eaten by some of the greatest men and women in history. 

With a suggested donation of £2.50 to download, the digital book included 18 authentic breakfasts eaten by the likes of Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Winston Churchill, Rosa Parks, Florence Nightingale, Albert Einstein and more. 

Loads of coverage followed, Send a Cow’s website crashed from the sheer volume of people trying to download the book and we bagged a haul of shiny awards. But the biggest win was how our idea helped Send a Cow exceed their donations target by more than half a million pounds.