Made With School Lunch

Envisioning the future created by school nutrition.

Objective:

School nutrition is one of the most essential but least understood initiatives in children’s education – producing nearly 30 million vital meals a day for students across the US. The School Nutrition Association, in partnership with the National Dairy Council, sought to create a content-based campaign to raise awareness about the critical nature of school meals and their impact, as well as promote further participation and advocacy by students, parents, administrators, and legislators.

Strategy:

Rather than simply creating content debunking school nutrition myths, the Mekanic team developed Made With School Lunch as a glimpse into a child’s future – showing the potential fostered when school nutrition was extended to kids who might otherwise not have adequate nutrition. Coupled with a playful, youthful design, Made With School Lunch literally and figuratively bridged that gap between children and adults, students, and parents.

Tactics:

Mekanic created a primary campaign video that brought together kids with their adult “selves” and showed them sharing lunch together with other school meal participants while the voiceover spoke about various school nutrition facts and benefits. We also developed and designed a few other materials – shorter-form videos, social posts, and campaign design assets, to help support the campaign as it made its way out into the virtual and physical world. All these assets were made available to the public via a Social Press Kit landing page.

Outcome:

28,000 total page views and more than 5,000 individual resource downloads, including posters, videos, and social media content.

Year 2 of the campaign is now ongoing in 2024, set to expand the Made With School Lunch initiative into a school-wide participatory experience that seeks to bring Made With School Lunch in and out of the halls, classrooms, and cafeteria.

“Mekanic exceeded expectations, creating an experience that resonated not only with our members
but also with industry partners eager to support school nutrition programs and professionals across the country.”

Danielle Baron, MA, MBA, FASAE, CAE
Vice President, Marketing, Communications & Industry Relations