Our Vision and why we are building the "Take A Fruit Break" Campaign
The aim of The "Take A Fruit Break" (TAFB) Campaign is quite simply to get people, especially kids to eat more fruit. The campaign was developed as a means for the Ekaya Institute to help fight the dramatic increases in childhood diseases and the "obesity epidemic" as declared by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. The Ekaya Institute, a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization established in 1985, has been working with young people for over 15 years in programs designed to build self-esteem and provide education in nutrition, environmentalism, and multimedia production.
When we became aware of the severity and extent of the problems of childhood obesity (a recent A&E Special reported that one in three children and adolescents in the US are overweight), and the correlation with volume of snack and fast food advertising to children, we launched an initiative to examine the best possible ways to use our resources to provide solutions to this problem. Since we cannot stop corporations from advertising this type of food to children, we have decided to join them by using equally powerful tactics to advertise fruit.
Snack and fast food advertising is known to be effective at directing children to eat chips, snack bars and other fast food when they are hungry and to drink sodas when they are thirsty. Therefore, we must use the same strategies to make it cool for kids to choose healthy foods. This involves the same type of seduction in the form of special effects, music, celebrities, pop culture, and fast paced eye candy. It also involves the use of completely innovative and contrasting rhythms that will capture these young viewers with a powerful new imagery, concept, sound, look, and feel.
These advertisements must show the healthfulness of the products without preaching, teaching, or mentioning the words "healthy" or "good-for-you". These phrases are specifically avoided in order to access young people without raising the defenses these much-used phrases can engender. This is also avoided in order to align the healthy foods with the "junk" foods so that the collective era of junk food advertising actually becomes the thunder that our campaign rides upon. It actually becomes an aid to selling healthy products because we become part of the "now" family of foods. We become part of the junk food lifestyle in that we are not "healthy" or "good for you" or any of those things that parents and teachers recommend, but we are "cool", "easy", "fast", "delicious", "now" and all those things that friends and peers are talking about.
The "Take A Fruit Break" Campaign aims to become a national advertising campaign along the lines of "Got Milk", "Only You can Prevent Forest Fires", or "Just do it!" - in other words, a household phrase, within five years. The impact that this campaign will have on the health of the upcoming generation is immense. Sponsoring this campaign is a way to help influence the future of our world by tackling issues of health, advertising to children, the future, and even the environment on a grass roots level. Our health affects everything else, including our ability to think clearly. This campaign will give today's kids a greater chance of growing up healthy in mind and body.