Our food system is at a tipping point -- among many environmental/health related issues, four of the top five causes of death in the US are food related. Panera Bread is fighting to change the food system for the better, yet is rarely given credit for doing so. The brand sought to educate customers, new fans and the food industry about food policy and recruit consumers to help in its mission to change the food industry from the inside out. To do this, we needed to make food policy issues entertaining and accessible, which required a platform that would be culturally relevant and engaging, using multiple touch points.

Performance objectives:

20,000 social mentions (@PaneraBread)

57% joy sentiment

150 - 200MM earned impressions

56% lift in brand favorability

Food policy may be complicated with many interconnected issues, but it can also be as simple as understanding how many ingredients are in your eggs, how much added sugar is in your beverage and what the animals that you eat, eat. Enter 'Food Interrupted,' a new series that brings leaders in the food world, like Marcus Samuelsson, Rainn Wilson, Hannah Hart, Sam Talbot, Chris Cosentino and Kevin Curry, together with everyday heroes at the front lines of issues including: clean food, animal welfare, sugar, transparency and the future of food. Each episode not only gives culinary talent a platform to propel a cause dear to their craft, but also teaches and encourages simple actions that can improve the way we all eat, thereby giving viewers tools to help change the food industry from the inside out.

Food Interrupted is a digitally-led, integrated content ecosystem built to facilitate lasting change in our food system -- complete with educational assets, social interaction points and awareness drivers across partner sites to ensure growth of the movement.

The series was distributed on Facebook Watch by Huffington Post and on YouTube by Participant Media’s SoulPancake, who were also co-producers on the series. Each episode was then complemented with custom editorial, digital display and video and television interstitials, shared across talent and influencer channels, further expanded across Panera’s brand channels, and included within strategic press moments to reach a wide audience and drive cultural impact.

Each episode drove conversation through platform-specific activations that brought the onscreen topic into people’s lives, with additional interactive content that prompted fans to take a food-policy inspired action and commit to a new food behavior.

Everything was housed in a centralized resource center: food-interrupted.com.

Food Interrupted launched in October, with a new episode premiering weekly for 6 weeks. Our content ecosystem used episode-specific content to build audience week over week, tailoring content to encourage viewership and engagement through social actions.

To create a well-rounded distribution network, episodes were shared by like-minded partners including Food Inc, and supporting content ran across influencer channels, Panera’s owned channels (social, website and email) and digitally across editorial partners like Hearst, Discovery and Food Network.

We used consumer insights each week to optimize activations. For example, as the series progressed, we learned that our fans love interacting with Giphy stickers. So, for our sugar episode we involved fans by creating a suite of IG Stickers and instructing them that with every sticker used, Panera would donate $1 to Sam Talbot’s organization Beyond Type 1. The activation drove more than 120K engagements, so Panera donated $60K to the organization.

The content ignited social engagement — reaching 50MM+ combined followers to earn 17MM+ episode views (to date) and 317MM+ impressions.

The series proved that America has an appetite for change and that they support Panera leading that charge — garnering 162K+ brand mentions (100MM+ over goal), 67% joy sentiment (10% over goal) in paid media and 56% lift in brand favorability (revealing an equal % lift in purchase intent).

We encouraged people to try eating plant-based at least one day per week with a menu item from featured host Kevin Curry (FitMenCook); with the help of Hannah Hart and a pun-filled Facebook Live, we exposed competitors' lack of ingredient transparency, and partnered with Instagram sensation @TasteofStreep to hilariously highlight Panera’s 100% clean food menu.

Through our extensive partnerships and content we have begun building an army of good food advocates to help change the food industry from the inside out.