Activation Ideas

Create Awareness by Including National Family Meals Month Messaging In Your Brand Communications

Incorporate National Family Meals Month™ graphics and content into your planned print, social media, and broadcast messaging and in-store promotional campaigns in September to call consumers’ attention to the family meals movement.

Here are some ideas to get started:

Social Media

Spread the family meals message in September with #familymealsmonth

• In September, and throughout the year, share research and quick statistics with your customers about the many ways children can benefit from eating meals together at home. Hashtag #familymealsmonth to let your customers know you’re in support of families and National Family Meals Month™.
• Encourage customers to celebrate National Family Meals Month™ in September by incorporating one more family meal at home per week into their new school year routines. Spark conversation, ask customers to share how they’re making more family meals happen at home, more often.
• Use the Raise Your Mitt To Commit™ logo provided in the toolkit as a call to action for customers. Encourage customers to engage on social media during National Family Meals Month™ by posting oven mitt selfies and taking the pledge to share one more family meal per week.
• Conduct contests designed to promote user-generated content and reward participants with prizes.  Weekly contest idea: Each week during National Family Meals Month™ ask your customers to share photos of their favorite home-cooked family meal—breakfast, lunch or dinner—and share product coupons with those who participate.  Contest can also call for recipes, videos, a favorite family meal memory, or a fun fact about the impact that having regular family meals has had in their lives.  Prizes may include: a cash reward, groceries for a week, branded oven mitt, or shout out on their submission by a celebrity.  
• Share family meals themed promotions that highlight the meal solutions you offer every day to help busy customers honor their pledges to share one more family meal at home per week.
• Share National Family Meals Month™ recipes from your Web site designed to help families share one more meal at home per week.
• Partner with other National Family Meals Month™ participants to host a Twitter chat or series of chats designed to raise the awareness of the importance of family meals, share recipes/resources, and generate dialogue with the public. 
• Amplify social media content across multiple platforms including, but not limited to, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, Yummily, and Periscope.  Add Yummly plug-ins to National Family Meals Month content.
• Encourage followers and fans to share facts, contests, recipes, and other content with their network, and across social media platforms, to showcase the importance and impact of family meals. 
• Establish blogger relationships or leverage bloggers in your existing network to write about National Family Meals Month and link back to recipes, programs, contests, etc.

Employee-specific ideas

• Snap a group photo of your employees raising their oven mitts in commitment to helping families share one more family meal at home per week. Share their commitment with your customers using hashtag #familymealsmonth.
• Encourage your employees to Raise Your Mitt to Commit™ to share one more meal at home per week with their families by taking the social media, oven mitt selfie pledge.
• Gather employee testimonials about what one more family meal per week means to them. Share these testimonials with customers on social media.

For Public Figures

• Ask celebrities, online influencers, and government officials to join in the National Family Meals Month™ celebration using the hashtag #familymealsmonth. Encourage them to take the social media, oven mitt selfie pledge to demonstrate their commitment to family and community. Remind them that family meals make families stronger, and strong families make healthy communities. Invite them to share a message about the importance of family meals in his or her own family.
• Engage RDs and other health professional groups to participate in National Family Meals Month by promoting it to their social networks and/or sharing their favorite family recipes or stories using #familymealsmonth.

In-Store

Work with brokers and retailers to develop in-store promotions:

• Offer plug-and-play opportunities for your retail partners that do not have established family meal programs.
• Partner with a retailer to implement “Family Meal of the Week” promotions featuring your products.
• Have fun with the National Family Meals Month™ Raise Your Mitt to Commit™ pledge. In collaboration with a retail partner, reward customers, whose spending exceeds a predetermined dollar amount during the month of September, with a free oven mitt branded with both company logos and the National Family Meals Month ™ logo. Each year, create a new mitt for loyal customers to collect.

Paid Advertising

• Go small or go big: simply place the National Family Meals Month™ icon, as appropriate, in your print media, broadcast ads, and coupon pages, or devote a Sunday insert to National Family Meals Month™. You’ll help bring attention to the benefits of family mealtime while positioning your company as a committed supporter of families and community.
• Bring the Raise Your Mitt to Commit™ pledge to print advertising and give a “mittful of savings” to customers during National Family Meals Month™. Feature the oven mitt selfies your customers upload to social media in your advertising to encourage even more customer engagement.

Other

• Repurpose existing content (e.g., video, research, photography, celebrity endorsements, etc.) to promote family meals.
• Promote National Family Meals Month™ content in newsletters, published articles, and news releases.
• Show your commitment to National Family Meals Month™ at FMI Connect

Best Practices

• Tag FMI in social media content for easy recognition and incorporation into National Family Meals Month metrics. 
• Whether simply posting or hosting an online chat, use audience feedback prompts.  Examples include: “Share a memory of your favorite family meal” or “Where is the most foreign or most unusual place your family has shared a meal?”
• Share success stories from previous National Family Meals Months.
• Feature visually engaging content including photos and videos.
• Feature user-generated content. 
• Feature real people and families (e.g., followers, fans, company employees).
• Incorporate an interactive component into your programming, such as contests. 
• Integrate campaign tie-ins across social media and advertising platforms.