With usage higher than ever, Food Banks Canada is urging Canadians and governments to help alleviate hunger.

The organization’s HungerCount 2023 report – insights from the country’s more than 4,750 food banks and community organizations – reveals that food bank visits spiked 78% since 2019, and reached the highest levels in Canadian history in 2023.

So Food Banks Canada’s national campaign asks: “When is it Enough?”

The report reveals food bank use among people who are employed continued to increase to record levels, with 17% of food bank clients in 2023 reporting employment as their main source of income, compared with 12% in 2019.

“Relentless inflation and a broken social safety net has caused many people who never thought they would need a food bank to walk through the doors for the first time,” says Kirstin Beardsley, CEO of Food Banks Canada. “With food banks across Canada in crisis mode as demand reaches new all-time highs, we must ask: when is it enough before we act?”

Reasons cited to visit a food bank include food costs, housing costs, low wages or not enough hours of work. One third of food bank clients are children.

The campaign’s media mix is digital, social (Meta, Pinterest, LinkedIn) and OOH, including a larger presence at Union Station. There was also a two-day digital takeover on CBC.ca.

The work is by The Local Collective, which last fall urged Canadians to fight the hunger monster.

“Creatively, it’s a different focus but it’s a part of the same platform,” says Kaitlin Doherty, co-founder and president at The Local Collective. “As an organization, Food Banks Canada is determined to ‘Starve the Hunger.’ But as you can imagine, this isn’t done strictly through advertising. It’s through education, working with different levels of government, awareness, advocacy and donations.”

Doherty tells strategy that last year’s mission was to get noticed in a new way and to alter perceptions of food insecurity, and it worked, seeing the largest engagement of any brand campaign to date.

Now, she says, governments at every level need to focus on this massive issue and on how critically the social system needs to be fixed.

“We need action, and we are asking Canadians to demand it,” she says.

Aber Group handled the media buy, Blakely handled the CRM and SpPr handled the PR.