The archive · PR & Stunts · Marketing decision · 2022
One Billion Meals sends UAE cars out with empty number plates to fund plates of food
Publicis sent UAE cars out with blank number plates — empty plates to fight empty food plates — and turned a plate-obsessed nation toward a charity auction.
One Billion Meals · Publicis Groupe
What it had to solve
The UAE's One Billion Meals initiative was set up to combat the world hunger crisis and needed record-breaking fundraising. Publicis Groupe noticed a telling parallel: what people paid for unique car number plates in the UAE was going up, and so was the cost of food on people's plates.
How it works
The UAE's One Billion Meals initiative was set up to fight the world hunger crisis, and it needed fundraising on a record scale. Publicis Groupe found its opening in a coincidence: the money people paid for unique car number plates in the UAE was going up — and so was the cost of food on people's plates.
The creative act was to make the two kinds of plate collide. Publicis created empty car plates: vehicles across the UAE ran with visibly blank number plates, an absence designed to spark curiosity on roads where personalised plates are a prized status symbol.
The empty plates pointed everyone at the auction where unique number plates were being sold off to fight world hunger, turning a status-symbol culture into a donor pool.
The work entered the D&AD awards archive, where its pun — empty car plates fighting empty food plates — is preserved as an example of turning a local obsession into a humanitarian ask.
Why it lands
- The pun is the strategy: 'empty plates' names both the luxury gap on UAE cars and the hunger the initiative fights, so one image carries the whole argument.
- Removing something prized — the number plate — makes the absence itself the message on streets full of status plates.
- Cars with blank plates distributed the campaign for free, moving through the same wealthy areas the auction would draw from.
- Linking the stunt to an auction gave curiosity a direct action: bid on a plate, and the money buys meals.
What it did
Blank plates turned a pun into a country-wide conversation starter, drew attention to the charity number-plate auction, and entered the D&AD awards archive.
What you can take
A pun can carry a serious ask: when a culture treasures a luxury object, remove it in public — the absence becomes the message that funds the cause.
Since then
The empty-plate cars ran ahead of the UAE's charity auction of unique number plates, and the work entered the D&AD awards archive as an Experiential case, where the plate pun remains a reference for turning a local status symbol into a hunger appeal.
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