Childhood obesity is a serious issue for the UK. At least a third of our children are overweight. Inactivity, poor diet and being obese increase the risk of heart and circulatory disease, the UK’s single biggest killer. We needed to raise the awareness of the importance of healthy eating amongst school children and affect behaviour change towards healthier eating.To do this, we needed to change the choice architecture around healthy foods, and positioning them as something they would potentially choose over junk foods.Rather than yet another advertising campaign telling children what to eat, we decided to put the children in charge. Using their school corridors, classrooms and playgrounds as the media, we created Food4Thought Healthy Vending Machines - the only vending machines created by schoolchildren, for schoolchildren. Responsibility was handed over to the pupils: they conducted taste tests, market research, designed the machines and created their own launch marketing materials.

We needed to teach the public a lesson they would never forget. The campaign featured hard man Vinnie Jones talking the viewer through how easy it is to do Hands-only CPR, all to the iconic disco track ‘Stayin’ Alive’ – which is the correct tempo to perform chest compressions.The campaign included a 40-second TVC, which was used to drive awareness and recall, and deliver the core campaign message at scale. A longer format film was created, for YouTube and allowed for further detailed messaging around performing Hands-only CPR. A rich media interactive digital banner campaign was designed to amplify the TV campaign, and deliver greater message understanding. Instore posters in BHF retail shops helped to raise awareness of the campaign, and also promoted the campaign T-shirts, available for sale within store.

The campaign has helped save 15 lives to date; these victims had CPR performed on them by people who knew how to do from watching the advert. The film has had over 1.9m views on Youtube, with 72,601 shares across social media in the first 10 days after launch. 51.2% of these Youtube views were referrals from video embedding on external sites, and another 100,590 were from Facebook. The campaign trended organically on Twitter five times on launch day, and also prompted 95,000 people to sign the BHF’s Emergency Life Saving skills in schools petition.