Already a member? Sign in below
ITV & Veg Power
adam&eveDDB, Pulse Films
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.
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.
Already a member? Sign in below
If your company is already a member, register your email address now to be able to access our exclusive member-only content.
If your company would like to become a member, please visit our Front Foot page for more details.
Enter your email address to receive a link to reset your password
Your password needs to be at least seven characters. Mixing upper and lower case, numbers and symbols like ! " ? $ % ^ & ) will make it stronger.
If your company is already a member, register your account now to be able to access our exclusive member-only content.