THE 14TH ANNUAL SHORTY AWARDS

The Shorty Awards honor the best of social media and digital. View this season's finalists!

Special Project

Special Project
From the 9th Annual Shorty Awards

Mind Over Munch

Entered in Food & Beverage

Objectives

Mind Over Munch is a brand dedicated to making living a healthy lifestyle easier and more fun! We're on a mission to redefine health. Forget about the labels, fad diets, and what anyone says is "healthy," and learn to make informed decisions about what is best for YOU! We want to inspire people to take responsibility for their healthy lifestyles and decisions. We want everyone to be able to pick up a package at the store and determine if it is right for their lifestyle because they are educated and able to make the right decision, rather than accepting baseless health claims that are often used as marketing strategies.

We also want to create a safe space where people can connect about food, health and fitness and feel accepted for their choices and lifestyle. We do not judge anyone's choices, or where they are on their journey. While we encourage everyone in the community to create a dialogue and participate in conversations because we can only learn more from those who are different than ourselves, we must also be open minded and recognize there is more than one way to be healthy.

We offer information through recipes, tips, educational videos, and tutorials in a quirky, fast paced, relatable and entertaining manner. At Mind Over Munch, we encourage every member of our community to be the best version of themselves, and that means always leaving room to learn and grow!

Strategy and Execution

There's nothing more important than the quality of our content, both in technical/aesthetic terms, as well as the information and education we provide. We set ourselves apart from other food, health and fitness brands and creators by remaining objective in our approach. We are not here to tell people how to live or what to do. We want people to learn from the objective information we provide so that they are able to make their OWN decisions. We accept and encourage all lifestyles and journeys. We only learn more from those who are different.

No content, regardless of the quality, can be impactful if it isn't gripping. We prioritize entertaining our viewers as much as we do teaching them. We keep the brand kid-friendly so people of all ages can come together to learn. We love hearing that families watch our content together. Entertaining has been a large part of our strategy since Day 1, and continues to play an integral role in the way we develop our content. When we were kids, we learned most from personalities like Bill Nye and Alton Brown, who made learning fun! And that is what we are trying to do with our nutrition and health education.

We have also always encouraged our community to be kind. The anonymity of the digital space has allowed for so much negativity, and we do not tolerate that. No health journey is easy, and we believe support and kindness will be much more effective than shaming. To moderate our community, we respond to every single comment– positive and negative– and leave the negative comments up for all to see, because we want people to recognize that there is a face behind the screen, and words can be impactful. We don't judge anyone, even the trolls, and we want to be the first ones to let them know we are here for them.

We started the channel about 3 years ago as girlfriend/boyfriend in our 500 square foot NYC apartment. We didn't know anything about video production or YouTube, but we knew this was a space where we had the opportunity to effectively help people with their healthy journeys. The two of us have struggled on our own journeys, and know that #thestruggleisreal. We taught ourselves to cook, photograph, shoot video, edit, animate and entertain, and our viewers have encouraged us every step of the way. We've since moved to LA, and Mind Over Munch is now our full time job.

The final consideration of our strategy is always quality design. While neither of us had any production experience, we both had design experience, being graphic designers. We really believe our design skills not only help set us apart, but also help to effectively communicate the education and information, including some very complex nutritional concepts broken down to be more digestible.

Results

Of course seeing subscribers and views increase every week is reassuring that we are doing the right thing, but nothing is more rewarding than reading the comments and daily emails we receive within the community. People on all types of journeys, from all different countries, who have different struggles with food, health and fitness come to our channel and feel accepted. They feel support, encouragement, accountability, to have information available to them to help them learn more every day. We feel that we have fostered a community unlike any other on YouTube or in our vertical space because of how open minded people prove to be. We do not measure success in subscribers or views, but rather in those emails and comments. We would rather see high engagement on a video, than a bump in subscribers. Of course we will always strive for growth, but we are enjoying every second of being a size where we are able to personally connect with each and every member of the community and make them feel as special as they should.

Media

Video for Mind Over Munch

Entrant Company / Organization Name

Mind Over Munch

Links

Entry Credits