Organisation type
Charity/third sector
Sector
Environment and sustainability
Food and nutrition
Service
Each year, millions of the pumpkins bought for Halloween will go in the bin without being eaten. Food waste is a serious environmental issue and a contributor to climate change.
Barley supported Hubbub to promote its annual Halloween food waste campaign. #EatYourPumpkin aims to increase awareness of the waste created each Halloween by people not eating the pumpkins they carve.
We wanted to reach and grab the attention of as many people as possible and encourage them to ditch carving in favour of decorating their pumpkins and eating them.
Our Halloween campaign tackled the shocking statistic that nearly half of the 30 million pumpkins were expected to be bought for carving would not be eaten – wasting around £95m worth of food.
Targeting families with young children, we tapped into the concern of many parents about finances and making their food go further.
Data showed that many people don’t actually enjoy the messy and time-consuming process of carving pumpkins and so, for the first time in the campaign’s history, we encouraged consumers to decorate their pumpkins, increasing longevity and the likelihood of it being eaten.
We brought award winning children’s book author and artist, Rob Biddulph, on board to create a special “Draw with Rob” video, to inspire kids to decorate their pumpkins.
We took a phased approach to outreach: raising awareness in early October and a high-impact push during half term, in the days leading up to Halloween.
We also partnered with Netmums to reach our parenting audience, using paid media to increase visibility. By combining strong data with family friendly messaging and creative content, the campaign encouraged more sustainable Halloween habits and reduced food waste across the UK.
Overall, the campaign was a great success.
We secured 109 items of coverage with just under 615 million opportunities to see/hear.
Broadcast coverage included BBC Morning Live and Sky News FYI, a news programme for young viewers and 15 media interviews were scheduled, mostly on local BBC radio stations.
Print articles included Daily Mirror and Daily Express and online coverage included Mirror Online, Metro.co.uk and inews.co.uk. We also secured a feature in Mail Online. The Week Junior and a full page in First News.
Rob Biddulph’s “Draw with Rob” video received 3,243 views, with 67,200 impressions. 100% of viewers were aged between 35-44, meaning the target audience was reached effectively.
Content via the Netmums partnership reached 4,479,462 across all platforms, against a target of 1,775,000.
A follow up survey of 4000 UK residents showed 43% had seen messaging about eating pumpkins and 41% saw messaging about decorating instead of carving.
pieces of media coverage
reached via Netmums partnership
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