Share A Meal - Unilever and Feeding America
One in five American kids don’t know where their next meal is coming from. Yet many Americans are convinced that child hunger is an issue only for other countries. To address this very real, very close-to-home issue, Unilever Project Sunlight created the Share A Meal campaign and partnered with Feeding America and its nationwide network of member food banks.
The mission of the program was twofold: to educate Americans and raise awareness around child hunger in the United States and to inspire and encourage people to take action to ensure that no child goes to bed hungry. With the help of a long-time partners, documentary film maker Patrick Creadon and Feeding America, a short film was created called “The Changing Face of Child Hunger”. The film profiled Americans struggling to put food on their table and its impact on their children. Then, to inspire action, a downloadable “tool kit” offered tips to people about hosting or participating in food drives or volunteering at food banks.
The launch of the program included actor Josh Duhamel and a 13-year-old youth hunger activist named Josh Williams which made splashes on The Rachel Ray Show, CNN Headline News, on the pages of Fast Company and on People.com. The social call-to-action “I #ShareAMeal because…” spread rapidly thanks to celebrity partners Kevin Jonas, Taye Diggs, Sarah Michelle Gellar, celebrity chefs and more than 100 social influencers.
A national in-store “You Buy One, We Give One” retail promotion drove customers to purchase Unilever products to support the cause. Eight retailers, including Walmart, Publix, and Target customized “Share A Meal” assets to support local and regional hunger issues.
Launched in 2014, the results were impressive with more than 900 million impressions in trade, regional, entertainment, and national broadcast. There were 75 million social impressions on social media and the film generated more than 4.3 million views in just one month. The ‘You Buy One, We Give One’ program drove the equivalent of more than 1.8 million meals donated. The program’s homepage witnessed a large spike in traffic, and Feeding America saw $5,331 in new donations from individuals. The program raised a total of $202,331 for Feeding America while ProjectSunlight.us page views increased by an unprecedented 346,625.