Mobilising an industry-wide alliance to get the nations children to consume more fruit and veg
One in three children leaves primary school overweight or obese, with diet being the most causal factor. Vegetable consumption has been declining since 1947 and only 1.2% of food and drink advertising was spent promoting them. By 2017, only 18% of kids were eating the recommended 3.5 portions a day. It was a nutritional time bomb, with long-term consequences. So, ITV and VegPower joined forces to tackle the issue, with a mission to change attitudes, behaviour and, ultimately, consumption of vegetables amongst primary-aged children.
ITV, VegPower, adamandeveDDB, and Goodstuff collaborated, mobilising an industry-wide alliance to run the campaign, despite receiving zero budget. Armed with obesity stats and brave creative, we persuaded a crack team of partners to join the fight: Rival supermarkets funded the production and activated at PO. The Advertising Association helped bring cinema, press and digital partners on board. The OOH industry ran a national campaign and Schools distributed reward charts to encourage the consumption of vegetables amongst pupils.
The campaign was a success, as 40% of 6-11-year-olds and half of parents agreed it would make kids want to eat more veg and 42% of younger parents and 34% of 6-8s agreed they had eaten more veg as a result – equivalent to 650,000 children. Organic Google search volume of featured vegetables increased +2.2%. Our goal was 1 extra portion of veg a week in 25% of families with kids (=4.4m vegetable units) but econometrics showed veg sales increased by 17.7m units, equating to an extra weekly portion for every household with kids.