Produce for Better Health Foundation Delivers Against Business Plan

Social Media & Web: The FruitsAndVeggiesMoreMatters.org website showed strong growth over the prior year, with a 27% increase in average monthly unique web visitors over 2011 (115,921 vs. 91,066), a 31% increase in opt-in Email participants (64,425 vs. 49,260), and a 6% increase in links from .gov/.org/.com sites (3052 vs. 2,880 sites linked).  Twitter followers (23,000 ) ended the year 130% of goal, and more than 2-fold higher than 2011.  Facebook fans (83,700 ) ended the year 140% of goal, and almost 4-fold higher than 2011.   

Influencers: Part of our social media and web success is attributed to enhanced outreach to nearly 20,000 health influencers who have signed up to receive additional information. PBH promoted webinars, new materials on our websites, as well as sample social media posts. An inaugural program that brought supermarket dietitians from 17 chains to the PMA Fresh Summit was a success. PBH also significantly increased its promotion of ‘all forms’ of fruits and vegetables by adding ‘all form’ graphics to the website, developing a health influencer document to debunk concerns about processed produce, and generally incorporating more ‘all forms’ messaging throughout all PBH media, web, influencer outreach, and social media activities.

Media Impressions: With 10 Billion impressions for the year, media impressions ended 3-fold more than the 3.1 Billion goal for 2012. This includes both print and electronic media. Strong media impressions are attributed largely to our strong social media work as well as a ‘news hook’ using data from our 2012 annual consumer survey.

Role Models: 45 organizations met Role Model status and 26 met Champion status when it came to helping spread the word about Fruits & Veggies—More Matters.  Of the 40 Industry Role Models, 6 were retailers, 34 were growers/shippers/processors/suppliers. Five of the role models were from the public health community. Of the 26 Champions, 9 were retailers, 14 were growers/shippers/processors/suppliers and 3 were from the public health community. Activities ranged from placing the Fruits & Veggies—More Matters logo on packaging (170 new SKU’s were approved) to including messaging in marketing and promotions efforts. There was also a net increase of 22 new licensees, a 7% increase over 2011.

Policy: PBH continued to track key areas identified in the National Action Plan and provided input into 8 relevant topics ranging from shelf-labeling issues pertaining to processed fruits and vegetables to submitting nominations for the 2015 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee.

Research: PBH’s review of the scientific literature:  Behavioral Economics and the Psychology of Fruit & Vegetable Consumption:  A Scientific Overview, 2012 was published in December’s on-line Journal of Food Studies. Additional analysis of PBH’s 2012 on-line consumer survey to better understand consumers who do and don’t eat various forms of fruit and vegetables was conducted and will be shared with PBH donors in 2013 after an additional overlay of interests and media usage of key consumer segments is completed.