Chef Ann Foundation
School Food Professionals Persuasion Campaign
Fenton partnered with the Chef Ann Foundation to address negative stereotypes surrounding school food workers in California, aiming to elevate the profession and address staffing shortages. Through a multi-million dollar statewide advertising campaign, Fenton used data-driven tactics, storytelling, and digital strategies to shift public perceptions and recruit more school food professionals. The campaign successfully increased parents’ perception of the skills required for school meal preparation, with 84% of parents recognizing the importance of these skills, up from 76% at the campaign’s start, demonstrating the campaign’s effectiveness in reshaping views across diverse demographics.
What We Did
- Multi-Channel Advertising Campaigns
- Data-Driven Strategy Development
- Audience Modeling and Segmentation
- Digital and Video Content Creation
- Paid Media Strategy and Management
- Online Survey Development and Implementation
- Stakeholder Collaboration and Partnership Building
- Perception Shifting Campaign Strategy
CHALLENGE
The perception of school food workers in California has long been shaped by negative stereotypes, portraying the profession as low-skilled and undervalued. When coupled with increasing staffing shortages, this posed a challenge to California’s to maximize its investment in reimagining school food programs by improving meal quality and access for students. Fenton partnered with Chef Ann Foundation, to address both the perception problem and staff crisis – aimed at highlighting school food workers as important contributors to children’s academic success, cultural experiences and nutritional health while demonstrating the profession as a stable and rewarding career.
APPROACH
Fenton, alongside the Chef Ann Foundation launched a multi-million dollar statewide advertising campaign in California to shift negative perceptions of school food worker professionals. Using data-driven tactics, compelling storytelling and digital strategies, this initiative aimed to recruit school professionals and reshape public perception. To help amplify the message and lift credibility of our efforts. Fenton also collaborated with expert groups like the Food for Climate League and Next Gen Food Insight Group to help amplify the message and lift credibility of our efforts.
To ensure we reached the most responsive audience and don’t waste impressions we utilized audience modeling through online surveys to identify the most persuadable parents, maximizing the efficiency or our paid media dollars. Additionally, AppleCart data was leveraged to hyper-target the public school community—including administrators, staff, and teachers—effectively raising awareness about the vital role school food professionals played in delivering nutritious meals to students.
IMPACT
The mid-campaign survey showed a clear increase in parents’ perception of school food professionals’ skills after being exposed to our advertisements. Before the campaign, 76% of parents surveyed in the baseline believed it took skill to prepare quality school meals. After 2.5 months of running the ads, that number rose to 84%. The ads effectively shifted perceptions across all demographics, including factors such as children’s grade level, region, race/ethnicity, language preference and the gender of the parent. These results demonstrate the power of delivering compelling, video-driven media at high frequency to successfully shift perceptions.
