Integrated Communications Strategy, Multichannel Marketing, Art Direction, Content Creation, Print Design, Digital Design, Web Development, Social Media, Illustration, Copywriting, Copy Editing and Marketing Collateral

Food Drive Day is Hawai‘i Foodbank’s largest and most highly-anticipated community engagement event. Each year, an integrated communications campaign is launched around the event to help raise awareness about hunger in Hawai‘i while also rallying support for Hawai‘i Foodbank’s mission. Heading into the 2024 event, Hawai‘i Foodbank aimed to leverage Food Drive Day’s widespread recognition to highlight one of its key communications pillars: health and nutrition. This goal was created in alignment with the organization’s larger strategic plan, and it also factored in primary research on Hawai‘i Foodbank’s public sentiment and brand recognition. Responses from focus groups, interviews and surveys revealed a high level of positive public sentiment and trust; however, some misnomers about the Foodbank prevailed – particularly, many respondents largely associated the Foodbank with non-perishable, canned food items like SPAM and did not make an immediate connection to healthy items like fresh fruits and vegetables. Similarly, many respondents were not aware that typically over one-quarter of the food distributed by Hawai‘i Foodbank is fresh, healthy produce. This research helped shape the goals and objectives of the Food Drive Day campaign – not only to raise awareness about hunger but to, more specifically, raise awareness about Hawai‘i Foodbank’s commitment to being the healthy option for those experiencing food insecurity.  

Working for Hawai‘i Foodbank, I developed a comprehensive integrated campaign to increase brand awareness and exposure of Hawai‘i Foodbank’s role in health and nutrition, as well as a dedicated, multi-channel fundraising appeal. The goal was to increase community engagement around Food Drive Day and generate fundraising revenue dedicated to the purchase of fresh, healthy produce.

Strategies included engagement with Hawai‘i Foodbank sponsors, media partners and ambassadors to broaden reach; influencer marketing with local artist Kamea Hadar, who designed the kalo leaf artwork for the campaign; creation and distribution of a media toolkit to establish consistent, unified messaging across channels and to all audiences and stakeholders; a coordinated earned media campaign including proclamations and certificates, press release, op-ed placement and editorial coverage; and consistent communications across Hawai‘i Foodbank’s owned media channels including social media content, a dedicated landing page, email communications, fundraising appeals, digital display ads and traditional PSA content (e.g., television and radio).

The 2024 Food Drive Day campaign won a 2025 Koa Anvil Award from the Public Relations Society of America in the category of Integrated Communications.