The Advertising Association promotes the role and rights of responsible advertising and its value to people, society, businesses and the economy. We represent UK advertisers, agencies, media owners and tech companies on behalf of the entire industry, acting as the connection between industry professionals and the politicians and policy-makers.

The Advertising Association focuses on major industry and policy areas that have huge ramifications on UK advertising. This section contains our work around public health, gambling advertising, data and e-privacy, trust, the digital economy and more.

Credos is the advertising industry’s independent think tank. It produces research, evidence and reports into the impact and effectiveness of and public and political response to advertising on behalf of UK advertisers in order to enable the industry to make informed decisions.

Front Foot is our industry’s member network of over 90 businesses across UK advertising. It aims to promote the role of responsible advertising and its value to people, society and the economy through a coalition of senior leaders from advertisers, agencies and media owners.

We run a number of events throughout the year, from our annual LEAD summit to the Media Business Course and regular breakfast briefings for our members. We are also the official UK representative for the world’s biggest festival of creativity – Cannes Lions.

Welcome to our Advertising Pays 8 hub – a one-stop-shop for the best UK advertising campaigns that are making a positive contribution to society

Advertising Pays 8 is the latest report from UK advertising’s think tank, Credos and is focused on the hugely important social contribution made by UK advertising. Right now, we are seeing this in action in the way our industry is responding to the Covid-19 crisis and we are gathering case studies here so you can see this in more detail.

The new report includes major new research commissioned by Credos on both the public’s and the advertising industry’s perception of the social good made by industry. The report also includes a variety of different case studies that bring our industry’s social contribution to life in a practical way. These case studies are grouped under five overall themes spanning different elements of social contribution and environmental sustainability: Health & Wellbeing; Community Improvement; Diversity & Inclusion; Environmental Preservation; and Human Rights.

This  hub features many of the leading examples of advertising’s social contribution that were researched for the report. It gives more information about how the campaigns came about, the purpose behind the advert and the impact it had on our society.

We will be growing this hub on an ongoing basis, so if you’d like to put forward a campaign to be included, particularly around Covid-19, or simply would like to know more, please do not hesitate to get in touch with Ellie.

Download your copy of Advertising Pays 8: UK advertising’s social contribution here.

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Health & Wellbeing
Eat Them To Defeat Them
BRAND / ORGANISATION

ITV & Veg Power

AGENCY

adam&eveDDB, Pulse Films

Media

Goodstuff

In January 2019 ITV launched a partnership with Veg Power supported by an alliance of 12 supermarkets and food brands to encourage children to eat more vegetables. By the time children start school, 1 in 4 are living with obesity. By Year 6, it’s 1 in 3. Poor dietary behaviours are a concern, as around 80% of children do not get the recommended 3.5 portions of vegetables per day. The Eat Them to Defeat Them campaign set out to change the narrative, moving away from the worn-out “Eat your Greens” message to a more child-focused, exciting proposition.

 ITV and Veg Power worked with adam&eveDDB (who donated their time pro-bono) to develop a campaign that was as action-packed, dynamic, and as exciting as the best children’s Saturday night TV. Recognising that children often say that they do not like vegetables, the advertisement casts vegetables as the villains, who can only be defeated if kids eat them. ITV contributed £2m of airtime to show the advertisement to family audiences.

 Additionally, outdoor and cinema companies donated media space, and supermarkets ran activation events promoting vegetables. Three hundred thousand sticker reward charts were distributed, enough for 10% of the UK’s Key Stage Two classes. Celebrity chefs from Jamie Oliver to Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall got involved, as did ITV daytime, regional news and kids shows. Schools across the country joined the social media campaign focusing on a new vegetable for each of the 10 weeks of the initiative.

You can watch the ad here

Impact

The campaign reached two thirds of households, and a third of families were aware of the campaign. It managed to change the attitudes of children in a difficult category, with 57% of children aged 6-11 saying the advertisement made eating veg more fun. As a result, 650,000 children (around 65% of those who had seen the advertisement) said they’d eaten more vegetables as a direct result of the campaign. 

 Econometric modelling identified a 2.3% uplift in vegetable sales during the campaign, the equivalent of 17.7 million units. That’s enough for an extra portion of vegetables per household with kids for every week that the campaign ran.