Campaigners have teamed up with creative agency Weber Shandwick to recreate an iconic political ad as part of a campaign urging MPs to widen access to free school meals.
The Food Foundation’s Young Food Ambassadors took to Westminster yesterday to promote its #Feedthefuture campaign, reworking one of the most political slogans in history, to highlight the sheer number of children missing out.
The creative depicts a ‘queue’ of 900,000 children in poverty being denied free school meals, which the campaigners say represents 342 miles if it was a real queue of children – an equivalent distance from London to Edinburgh.
Supporting the campaign, celebrity chefs Tom Kerridge and Melissa Hemsley have also worked alongside the Food Foundation and the Young Food Ambassador’s campaigning.
Subscribe to Marketing Beat for free
Sign up here to get the latest agency-related news sent straight to your inbox each morning
The campaign follows the announcement that all London primary school children are now eligible for a free school meals from September for one year through emergency funding provided by the London Mayor Sadiq Khan, yet outside London, the threshold for eligibility still differs.
“This is an incredibly important issue so we wanted to make as much noise as possible around our new campaign in order to grab people’s attention,” said The Food Foundation advocacy manager on children’s food, Zoe McIntyre.
“I sincerely hope that politicians will listen to our calls for action and that our campaign can have a lasting and positive impact on young people all over the country.”
Weber Shandwick UK CEO Helen Bennett added: “We feel privileged to support the #FeedtheFuture campaign to expand eligibility of free school meals.
“’Kids Aren’t Eating’ is a powerful illustration of the reality that so many are facing. We hope it will have a lasting impact on policymakers who can put an end to the current postcode lottery.”
