In the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, 1 in 4 kids could face hunger this year. No Kid Hungry is working to end childhood hunger by helping launch and improve programs that give all kids the healthy food they need to thrive. With the onset of the pandemic and disruption to school meal programs, No Kid Hungry reached out to GroundTruth to help increase awareness of resources available to families during this time.
In 2018, GroundTruth’s introduction to Dine for No Kid Hungry began in an unexpected way when a Marketing Manager at GroundTruth heard about the organization and decided to reach out through their website, hoping to find a way to help. Luckily, Susan Karlen, Sr. Manager of Partnership Development at Dine for No Kid Hungry saw the request and reached out to learn more.
With successful partnerships on past initiatives, like the 2018 Dine for No Kid Hungry campaign which drove over $1.3M raised across several restaurants and locations and the 2019 Dine for No Kid Hungry campaign, which helped contribute over $500K raised by the participating restaurants, GroundTruth knew that we could positively impact the results of this COVID-19 meal relief project.
The goal of this joint effort was to raise awareness of the free meals service offering, with the main KPI of driving measurable visits to participating meal distribution sites. Additional metrics considered were click-through rate, total impressions, and unique consumers reached.
GroundTruth believes that location does not only provide insight into past behavior, but can also help reach consumers in the moments that matter most. GroundTruth obtains location data from mobile phone users who have opted-in to share their location with one of the many apps they use on a daily basis.
Leveraging our best-in-class location-based Ads Manager platform, GroundTruth identified and strategically engaged mobile users within specific boundaries by layering our precise targeting tactics with demographic data.
Proximity Targeting enabled GroundTruth to define geofence boundaries within a one-mile radius of 500 meal pick-up sites throughout New York City and target audiences specific to those areas.
Zip codes in New York City where at least 30% of the population live in poverty have 2X the infections compared to low-poverty neighborhoods. In order to better reach the families most affected, GroundTruth added demographic layers onto all targeting tactics to hyper-focus their efforts. To increase engagement among Spanish-speaking households, ads were also created in Spanish and were served to devices based on their default language setting.
Throughout the month-long campaign, 11.5k visits to meal distribution sites were driven by GroundTruth media.
Click-Through rates for all audience targeting were well above benchmark, with highest rates from African-American and Spanish speaking segments, 0.66% and 0.64% respectively. Visitation rates among the various audience segments were between 1.09%-1.55% highlighting the effectiveness these informative ads had in connecting community members with free meal sites closest to them.
Across all markets, audiences ages 25-34 showed the highest and most consistent visitation to partnering schools, likely due to the higher risk for older age groups to be in public areas. This campaign proved successful in swiftly reaching families most at-risk and providing them with a safe and free resource during a health crisis.
This campaign proved so successful that No Kid Hungry is continuing to partner with GroundTruth on other ongoing COVID-19 relief initiatives, and we look forward to continuing to join forces to benefit local communities.
