'The amazing powers of veg'

Thursday 07 February 2019

A multimillion-pound marketing campaign to promote ‘the amazing powers of veg’ has launched, with plans to help the Bailiwick make the most of it.

With only 1.2% of food and drink marketing spend in the UK being spent on vegetables, ‘Veg Power’ is looking to act as an independent brand manager for vegetables and start to try and level the playing field.

Watch the advert here. 

Evidence proves the impact advertising has on what children ask for, what they eat and how much they eat – hence the £143 million spent in 2016 by the top 18 spending crisp, confectionery and sugary drinks brands. Research shows that these foods all contribute to childhood obesity. Now, with a range of successes already - including a £100,000 crowd funding campaign and £2m. of advertising space given by ITV - Veg Power has teamed up with agency, adam&eveDDB to create a series of TV adverts.

The campaign is trying to pump money into promoting fruit and veg in the same way huge amounts are spent on advertising other foods. 

Those adverts have already been shown during Coronation Street and Saturday’s The Voice – with a ‘veg of the week’ being chosen for 10 weeks from 4 February. This coverage will be matched with a social marketing campaign linked to #VegPower and #EatThemToDefeatThem.

In Guernsey, the new Health Improvement Commission (HIC) has picked up the national campaign to kick off its planned work to support parents boost veg eating among children and young people. In the first instance, early years settings and primary schools across the islands have received links to Veg Power and the major supermarket, including Channel Islands Co-operative Society Ltd and Sandpiper CI, are looking at ways to support the campaign and help make buying veg as attractive and easy as possible.

"Veg have so often missed out on the impact marketing can have on sales, yet they can play such an important role in ‘powering up the next generation’," Lucy Whitman, Health Improvement Practitioner at the HIC, said.

"We are excited to see that, already, we have had positive responses from early years settings, schools and supermarkets, keen to be involved in giving veg a better chance of being on children and young people’s plates. We are intending this is just the start of local work in this area." 

The Co-Op and Sandpiper's supermarkets, Iceland and Morrisons', are supporting the initiative. 

The CI Co-Operative Society has already demonstrated a passion for educating children on the importance of a healthy diet with its Goodness Gang initiative - it said it believed that ‘Veg Power’ will be very popular with its customers.

Additionally, a spokesman from Sandpiper CI said: “We work hard with our local and national suppliers to get great quality and value vegetables (and fruit) into our stores. We’re delighted to support Veg Power and ITV in their landmark campaign to encourage children to eat more vegetables, which is obviously great benefit for their health. We will be supporting the campaign in our stores from now until the end of the campaign in April.

"It is vital that children from an early age understand the importance of keeping healthy, which very much includes having a healthy balanced diet. At Castel School, the children in Reception are encouraged to bring in a variety of healthy snacks for their morning break. It's a sociable time where children talk about the different fruit and veg they like and dislike and why. We have found that by seeing their peers enjoying a variety of fruit and vegetables, and having the opportunity to grow their own, the children are much more confident to try new things."

Pictured top: A screengrab from the campaign's website.