Today's kids are the first generation of children expected to live shorter lives than their parents. The Partnership for a Healthier America (PHA) is committed to reversing this trend by working with the private sector and its Honorary Chair First Lady Michelle Obama to make healthier choices easier for busy parents and families.
On the supply side we work with more than 200 brands like Dannon, Del Monte, Mercedes-Benz USA, Nike, Sodexo, Walmart, nearly 50 college campuses, 1,000 convenience stores and much more to increase access to healthier options. Meanwhile, our unique consumer campaigns aim to increase demand for those healthier products.
We work toward these goals in a variety of ways. PHA communications platforms provide recipes, tips and information for millions of consumers, while broader marketing campaigns such as Drink Up and FNV leverage social media through disruptive marketing, celebrity star-power and the same bold creative big brands use to market their products. Except instead of selling cars or laptops or selfie sticks, Drink Up encourages more people to drink more water more often, and FNV works to increase consumption of fruits and veggies.
We are helping to shine the spotlight on healthier options employing the same marketing strategies that have been so successful for leading companies over the years, all in an effort to increase consumption of better-for-you products. After all, why should they get to have all the fun?
Over the past year, Drink Up and FNV have focused on increasing demand for the typically under-marketed, fruits, veggies and all forms of water. Both campaigns are designed as stand-alone brands, and while they exist as PHA programs, each has a unique voice on social media that speaks to a distinct consumer audience.
In 2015, PHA's Drink Up initiative honed in on reaching fence-sitters, individuals that know they should be drinking more water, but aren't quite following through. We did this through targeted social and digital content, ads, promotions, activations, POS, as well as discreet social campaigns like "Drink Up Ashanti".
In a first of its kind effort, we "dehydrated" Ashanti's new single, "Let's Go", and created four versions of the song and of the music video that represented increasing levels of hydration. The only way to hydrate the song was for people to use #DrinkUpAshanti on Instagram and Twitter. Each post contributed a drop of water to help achieve the next level of hydration. We took that one step further and allowed anyone who used the hashtag to find their post embedded within the music video itself, so they could feel that personal connection to the artist and see how they had helped the song and video improve. The campaign ran for one month, from November 5 – December 5, and the song was released at the conclusion of the campaign.
As for FNV, since launching in February 2015, we have focused our social media strategy around meeting our target audience, older teens and young moms, on their turf and according to their terms with topical, shareable, celebrity-driven content, all in an effort to drive brand love and motivate our targets to eat more fruits & veggies.
Given the importance of video and graphics, we chose to focus our social strategy on engaging our target audience through Instagram, Tumblr, Snapchat and Twitter. A secondary target for us has been Facebook, which we use to reach younger, Millennial moms. More than fifty celebrities are on Team FNV helping us influence these core audiences, including A-list sports stars, actors, musicians, YouTube stars and more.
Most importantly, both initiatives use a straightforward, self-aware tone on social - and everywhere - that doesn't preach or even provide health tips - we look for the emotional connection first and let others worry about educating.
From the start, we have used the strengths of each platform, tailoring our messages and using an "always-on", data-driven and reactionary approach to social media, constantly evolving and optimizing along the way.
Drink Up Ashanti garnered over 650 million impressions during its one-month run. In addition to adding over 3,000 new followers to Drink Up's social platforms, we reached more than 13 million unique Twitter accounts. Media coverage ranged from an exclusive article on Parade.com to a Twitter takeover of iHeart Radio's feed by Ashanti and an accompanying piece in iHeart Media, to Dr. Oz, The Real, Hollywood Live, and TMZ. Tack on more than 450,000 likes of #DrinkUpAshanti posts on Ashanti's official Instagram account and we feel the campaign was enthusiastically received and disseminated the Drink Up brand widely.
As for FNV, by paying close attention to what works and what doesn't, and adjusting accordingly, we've been able to find and refine one tone of voice that can play across multiple platforms.
FNV has been able to maintain and grow engagement while also growing our fan base. Despite changing platform algorithms, we've maintained high engagement rates thanks to our reactive strategy. FNV is a fresh new brand that didn't exist a year ago, and now we not only have a multi-platform social presence, but real engagement that exceeds industry standards.
Facebook: 3.33% vs. industry standard: 0.65%
Twitter: 2.68% vs. industry standard: 0.07%
Instagram: 7.85% vs. industry standard: 3.3%
