Veg Power initiative goes from strength to strength with support from ifour

The artwork for the Veg Power campaign was created by Drum Network member ifour after responding to a call for entries originally published in The Drum last August. The agency won the competition, which was judged by Sir John Hegarty and a panel of schoolchildren, with a superhero themed design.

The poster acted as a launch pad for the Veg Power Fund, a crowdfund to raise cash to buy media advertising space to promote vegetables. Earlier this month, the fund successfully hit its original target of £100,000 in just 42 days, with contributions from 274 supporters, including many different organisations across the food system such as NFU, Sodexo, Sainsburys, Tesco, Ella's Kitchen and Innocent Drinks. More than £10K was raised directly from members of the public.

Since winning the competition, ifour has continued to support the campaign for free, producing creative for print, social media, producing the Veg Power website and designing Veg Power’s crowd-funder new reward book, ‘The Truly Epic Book of Veg Power’.

Celebrity foodies Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, Jamie Oliver, Prue Leith CBE, Nadiya Hussain, Michel Roux Jr and a host of other food experts have all contributed to the family recipe and nutrition book, containing ideas and recipes to encourage children to eat more veg.

Published later this month, the 128-page book is designed to get families with primary and pre-school kids sharing it together, according to Dan Parker of The Food Foundation. He said: “The book is aimed at families who may be short of time, budget and cooking skills and with kids that may not eat any veg at all. We want families to grow vegetables, choose menus, cook and eat together. For the kids the book will be a fun journey into veg and for the parents it will be the definitive manual for getting more veg into their children.”

The first edition will be distributed exclusively to members of the public who have supported the Veg Power crowdfund, to the many volunteers who have helped promote the initiative and to politicians, journalists and civil and business leaders.

Parker said: “We plan to find the means to circulate the book more widely through commercial publication or partnerships. It is our hope that every family in the UK can get access to this great content and that we can invest the combined knowledge and skills of Britain’s food and health community to help Britain eat its way to better health.”

Graeme Hall, creative director of ifour said: “We’re more than happy to support Veg Power. The team at the Food Foundation are doing an amazing job and we love working with them. It’s great seeing our creative work out there, potentially making a big difference to children’s health.”