Oranges hit the mark for Forgotten Harvest

Behind an unknown grocery store a stock boy turned pitcher reaches into a crate and pulls out an orange. He looks left, then right, winds up and… SPLAT!!! The orange smashes into a target crudely drawn onto the open lid of a dumpster. As the pulpy mess slides down into the garbage, he reaches for another and another and another. It’s a terrible waste of good food. And that’s the point.

This scene is the beginning of the new public service announcement created for Forgotten Harvest by The Yaffe Group and produced by Dark Spark Productions. It also happens to be based on a true story. Forgotten Harvest rescues fresh food from grocery stores, restaurants and other places – food that’s still good but that would otherwise be thrown out. When Yaffe first meet with the charity to work on the campaign, one of the staff told how she had been trying to convince a grocer to give them his leftover produce. The grocer insisted he’d like to help, but they just never had any food left that got thrown out. Unable to convince him she headed back to her car that was parked in back. As she walked she kept hearing this banging noise. When she rounded the corner, there was the grocer’s stock boy pitching oranges at a target on the dumpster. He had a whole cart of oranges that were going to waste.

Yaffe used that story as inspiration to create Forgotten Harvest’s TV spot, intercutting images of hungry people with the splats of oranges into the dumpster. Finally one of the oranges is plucked from the air by a Forgotten Harvest delivery man, put into a crate and loaded onto his truck. The rescued food then makes it’s way to help feed Metro Detroit’s hungry.

“You grasped our mission and message so easily and managed to transform it so perfectly into a 30-second message,” said Monica Luoma, Forgotten Harvest’s Director of Communication and Events. “Watching that production come to life was simply amazing. It is something that we’ve dreamed about forever and never thought would be a reality”

Creating and producing the spot was a joint effort between The Yaffe Group and Dark Spark Productions. They worked together from the beginning, both providing their services voluntarily. Yessian provided the music track and Ron Rose lent his legendary voice to the project. You can see the completed spot in the Podcast section of www.yaffetidbits.com or on a Detroit area TV near you.

See the video here.