Launching a revolutionary new Virtual Food Pantry
Strategic direction
Brand development
Print material
Digital
When West Suburban Community Pantry was looking for ways to promote the launch of their Virtual Food Pantry, a free online grocery story for those in need, they came to us to strategize a launch approach that fit their needs and audience.
Positioning the Virtual Food Pantry
How do you “sell” free grocery shopping online? Working with writer Allison Weber, we repositioned the original “online ordering” portal into the more appropriately named Virtual Food Pantry. Descriptive, concise copy tells the audience immediately why the Virtual Food Pantry exists: it makes it easy for people facing tough times to order free groceries online so they can make ends meet.
We identified key strategic partners for the Pantry and created a Partner’s Toolkit to help them get the word out to their own audiences. Packed with resources such as flyers, social media posts, and FAQs, it is an easy way for partners to share this new community resource with their clients, volunteers, and staff.
To keep the Virtual Food Pantry in front of strategic partners, we developed a series of HTML emails to promote different resources from West Suburban Community Pantry. New material, such as Spanish language flyers are sent on a regular basis, with a link back to the original Partner’s Toolkit in each email as well.
West Suburban Community Pantry also has audiences of donors, board members, volunteers, and other community members who need to be told about the Virtual Food Pantry. We created a standard PowerPoint to share the same consistent message across all stakeholders.
Online advertising plays a huge role in getting the word out about the Virtual Food Pantry – especially during the pandemic. We recruit social media ambassadors to post in various community Facebook groups with pre-written posts, develop social media ads directing people to a landing page to learn more, and work with local mom groups to virtually spread the word.
As a cost-effective, on-brand, and fun way to promote the Virtual Food Pantry at community events, we created stickers with QR codes linking to an FAQ page. The stickers don’t take up much space for storage, and healthy snacks are a perfect vehicle to get the word out about this new community resource.
