Associate Professor, Wageningen University & Research (WUR)
Robbie Postma
Food x creativity
Food stylist
Maarten Heijltjes
Waarmakers Studio
Product Designer
Simon Akkaya
Waarmakers Studio
Product designer
Rolina de Haan
Royal Goedewaagen
Product producer
Rens Korevaar
Earforce
Sound & Music
Tymen Geurts
Earforce
Sound & Music
Reinder van Zalk
Earforce
Sound and music
Philip Huis in 't Veld
Philip Post production
Post production
Frank Witte
Creative Venue PR
PR
Jacqueline Buijs
HappyLife PR
PR
Jessica Hartley
PR
PR
Egotribe Egotribe
Egotibe
Website building
Nicole Freid
HAK
Head of marketing & innovation
Yolanda van Grootel
HAK
Brand communication manager
Background
Most people in the Netherlands structurally eat too little vegetables. Big government led advertising campaigns with huge budgets were not able to change this behavior. HAK, being is one of the biggest vegetable brands in Western Europe, wants to change this. It brief was to to come up with new innovative ways to tackle this issue, because traditional advertising had failed in the last couple of decades to generate change. This is a big step for a company which is perceived by 90% of The Netherlands as being traditional. Budget therefore was limited, 200k all-in for development, production and promotion.
Describe the creative idea (40% of vote)
HAK’s mission statement is to ‘help people eat more vegetables at as many moments at the day as possible’. They don’t want this just to be a statement. HAK wants to put its money where its mouth is. And actively help people to eat more veggies. Data showed this is a problem that starts early in life, as only a handful of children eat the recommended daily allowance of greens. The period between ages 4 and 8 years is crucial: that’s when you lay the foundation for your eating pattern. That’s why we focused on children in this age group and their parents.
We teamed up with the world’s leading food university: Wageningen University & Research. And designed The Helping Plate: An intelligent plate designed around smart scientific nudges, to help children (and their parents) to eat more vegetables more easily. Based on smart scientific nudges.
Describe the execution (40% of vote)
The Helping Plate was designed based on the following scientific data:
Mirroring
A child’s brain mirrors and copies its parents’ behaviour, so the plate is round and ceramic – just like their parents’ plates.
More = more
By making the plate larger, the portion seems smaller. This is called the Delboeuf illusion, and lets the brain perceive the meal as more doable.
Delboeuf illusion
An indentation lets you secretly serve more vegetables. As there is more, a child will automatically also eat more.
Closer is better
This indentation was designed to be placed close to the child, as food that is closer ends up in your belly sooner.
Tastier by colour
The white surface behind the vegetables lets our brains experience them as looking tastier. To make the veggies look more appetising than the rest of the meal, from there the plate gradually becomes darker.
List the results (20% of vote)
The plate immediately became an official bestseller at the biggest Dutch department store, the initial run sold out within hours. We are now at the third run, and a total of 34,000 plates. It benefited the HAK brand massively. It broke with the traditional image they had: +14% of the target audience now find the brand modern/contemporary. It boosted the preference for the HAK brand with +11%. And on top of that +10% are willing the pay more for HAK compared to other brands.
The plate was front page news in The Netherlands. Free publicity reached 3,82 million, in a country which inhabits only 1,9 million families with kids. Becoming food for thought on the importance of vegetables and how design can help us eat healthier. This not only got people to think about their daily vegetable intake. But actually helped families eating more vegetables on a daily basis.