Eat Them to Defeat Them

Children in the UK aren’t eating enough vegetables. While traditional public health messaging around 5/day is well known, it hasn’t translated into increased veg intake. To help change this, Veg Power, the not-for-profit focused on increasing vegetable consumption in the UK, joined forces with iTV in 2019 and created The Eat Them to Defeat Them campaign, combining the power of advertising with a schools’ programme. Developed to engage children on this topic in a fun and creative way it has involved a collaboration of creative talent, celebrity support, local government support, schools and catering companies. We created a positive buzz and a central narrative which is fun and, critically, puts the parents and kids on the same side. Our social media campaign convenes a highly diverse group including corporates, government, schools, celebrities and parents and focuses on collaboration and increasing activation in schools and at home. We united a core campaign idea around a hashtag driven by content created by the community and social media provides an affirmation network, where all the stakeholders convene, inspire and support each other. In the 1st April 2021 – 31st March 2022 period of these awards 2,575 accounts have posted 10,343 posts reaching 17.8m accounts giving 47.5m impressions. Since our launch in 2019 12,775 unique accounts have made 45,569 posts giving 690m total impressions. All of this has supported the success of the wider campaign - encouraging children to give veg a try!