PATRIOT PLATES
a campaign summary
OVERVIEW
Patriot Plates is a three-week long social media campaign created by a team of 6 people through the PR & Social Media course taken in Mason. This campaign sought to increase awareness and provide resources for healthy eating habits among GMU students. We used popular social media platforms among Mason students, such as Instagram, TikTok, and Pinterest to promote budget-friendly recipes, educational content about nutrition, as well as on-campus resources available.
Brand logo used for our social media icons
RESEARCH
Our team's secondary research on the topic of healthy eating shows that college students often lack skills in planning, shopping, and preparation of healthy foods. It takes additional time and costs that not many students have due to the overbearing schedules and expectations of a school semester.
With this information, we conducted a survey of George Mason Students asking them about their eating habits.
Receiving 85 responses, this helped us redefine our target audience, as well as our strategies.
PLANNING
With our foundations, we began planning the execution.
Campaign objectives: Increase engagement with GMU students by gaining 60 new followers on Instagram @patriot_plates and track those followers who accesses the nutritional resources through the linktree in our bio.
Call to action: Engage with us on social media, click the link tree in our bio to access helpful resources, visit the GMU Health website, and follow our recipes for healthy inspiration!
Long-term goal: Raise awareness about nutritional resources offered to GMU college students to promote overall health, and make eating healthy more fun.
chosen platforms
Instagram: @patriot_plates
TikTok: @patriot.plates
content calendar
brand style guide
CAMPAIGN EXECUTION
Our goal was to inform. We want to give GMU students access to recipes, dietary information, and nutritional resources, as well as highlighting any on-campus resources for students to take advantage of.
We divided our content into three distinct categories to achieve this goal: recipe posts, myth-busting posts, and general informational posts.
Displayed below are my contributions.
campaign introduction
recipe post
myth-busting post
general informational post
RESULTS & ANALYSIS
(measured at end of campaign after 21 days)
What worked:
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We made nutritional resources easily accessible
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We got in touch with the influential, on-campus dietician and interviewed her on her services and her expertise.
What did not work:
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Our TikTok content was getting views, but we did not consistently post there because we saved that for just recipe videos
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Only focusing on two social media platforms.
What could've been done differently:
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Introduced a TikTok challenge
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Dietician takeover for Q&A
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Adding myth busters to IG story with polls to increase engagement
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Use more social media platforms to expand our reach.
quantitative results
Qualitatively, this campaign achieved its objectives as our Instagram profile gained 63 followers by the end of the campaign (21 days).
Our LinkTree also received 33% clickrate with 70 views at the end of the campaign.
qualitative results
Patriot Plates successfully established a connection with the on-campus dietician, which encouraged our peers to make appointments to visit them.
Patriot Plates also gained 1 earned media: an Instagram story showing a recreation of one of our recipe videos.
