British creatives in Berlin at M&C Saatchi and M&C Saatchi Sports & Entertainment use an alternative advent calendar to raise money for charity

Real talk - 2016 has been pretty pants. Wars and terrorism raged, we lost Prince and David Bowie (to name just two of the many cultural giants who passed) and some of the tightest political battles of our time ensued. Two British creatives working in Berlin, Rob Hall (M&C Saatchi) and Tim Cook (M&C Saatchi Sports & Entertainment), are counting down the end of “the shittest year ever” with the #BadventCalendar. The #BadventCalendar is, as the name suggests, just like an advent calendar, except it reveals information about some of the worst events that have unfolded in 2016. We’ll admit, it’s not the most festive of Christmas initiatives - but as each day of advent passes, viewers are presented with a self-produced piece of content about a specific event, before being asked to donate to Educaid Sierra Leone, a charity which helps gives kids free education where it isn’t a possibility. LBB’s Addison Capper chatted with Rob and Tim to find out more.

Check out some of the already released content within the interview below, but be sure to head to the dedicated Tumblr for more.

To donate, please click here .





LBB> What inspired the Badvent Calendar? (Apart from the awful events featured within it.)

Rob & Tim> We think it’s fair to say that 2016 has been a pretty shite year. The whole world knows it and we all want it to be over. So our first thought was to create a countdown to 2017 during the month of December. Now, you don’t have to be Einstein to see how we made the leap to an advent calendar from that! Especially when you consider that it was mid-November when we first came up with the idea and every shop in Berlin was stocked with the bloody things! Nobody does Christmas quite like the Germans!

LBB> All of the content is pretty dark, but you’ve put a humorous spin on it. Why?

Rob & Tim> We didn’t want to make tragedies out of tragedies. Especially at Christmas – as the lyrics of ‘Deck the Halls’ say, “’tis the season to be jolly”. And since we’re heavily reliant on word of mouth, we knew from experience that it's a lot harder to talk through tears. Plus, nothing spreads faster than a good joke. So we fully embraced our shared dark taste of humour and had a lot of fun creating the project.

LBB> How tricky was it to tow that line between dark humour, but also still respecting the events you’re talking about?

Rob & Tim> Not that tricky at all to be honest. We believe that no subject should be off-limits in comedy. Period. There was only one piece of content that we ended up killing, simply because the gags made your stomach churn. And that would be a waste of Christmas dinner, right?

LBB> What kind of research did you have to undertake for this project?

Rob & Tim> All of the tragedies are well-known events, so we really didn’t have to research much. They just rolled off the tongue like projectile vomit. Only when it came to the specifics, like dates and the total number of deaths, did we actually have to go online and get the facts right. That’s a must when you’re talking about such serious events.





LBB> Who did you work with on the production of the content? How did you get it off the ground around your day jobs at M&C?

Rob & Tim> Everything you see, hear and read is done by us. Those are our voices and those are our words. And we created it all in our free time (this is a side project, after all). It's taken quite a lot of late nights and weekends just to get all the content together, obviously due to our daily business taking priority. But when you're doing something you really love, it doesn’t really feel like work at all. We’re used to taking our creativity outside the office. Rob recently directed a short film that’s playing at a few festivals and Tim makes music and occasionally DJs.

LBB> Tell us about the events you’ve featured… you weren’t short on things to choose from. How did you narrow them down? Are they more a reflection on the things that affected you both?

Rob & Tim> We wanted to find a balance between all of the different types of events i.e. political, natural disasters, celebrity deaths and terrorist attacks. So expect to see a mixture. Most of the tragedies received a lot of publicity, while some didn’t get as much press as they should have. So hopefully this helps even the balance a little! We were very subjective with our choices, but ultimately they are all chosen to hammer home the message that 2016 was the ‘Year of Shite’ and we really don’t want a repeat. Pretty please.

LBB> The main aim of this is to raise money for Educaid Sierra Leone - how are you feeding it for maximum exposure?

Rob & Tim> Besides the website on tumblr, we’ve got a Twitter account and Facebook page, where we share our content and always aim to bring attention to this remarkable charity.

LBB> And why that charity?

Rob & Tim> Our first thought was to do #BadventCalendar for good, especially since Christmas is the time for giving. So we decided to raise money for Educaid Sierra Leone - a remarkable charity, which helps kids get the education they need to have a better future. The charity appealed to us especially because education has played a big part in our lives, and we believe that education should be a right not a privilege. Perhaps if people were a bit more educated, some events in 2016 wouldn’t have happened!

LBB> What are your end goals?

Rob & Tim> Well we are really hoping to end 2016 on a high and raise £1000 by Christmas day, so that we can give the kids of Sierra Leone a present they’ll never forget. If we can raise more than that figure, maybe we’ll have to rethink how bad 2016 actually was!

Here’s a handy breakdown of what a donation gets you:

£ 195.00 - Education, food, medical care for 1 pupil for 1 year

£ 50.00 - Feeds a child for a year

£ 25.00 - Keeps a girl in our safe house for 3 months

£ 10.00 - Education, food, medical care for 1 pupil for 2 weeks

Follow #BadventCalendar on Facebook and Twitter.