With a third of all children now obese by the time they’re 11, the government needed to do something to address the trend.

We were hired by the School Food Trust (SFT) to combat rising childhood obesity by persuading school children to eat healthy school dinners.

Rather than preaching to children about healthy eating, our strategy focused on providing them with the information they needed to make their own decisions, and on using spokespeople who engaged with the young people on their level.

But with such a range of ages and social 'tribes' to speak to, our strategy had to be multi-chanelled.

We worked with the SFT over three years, launching a range of initiatives which targeted young people, parents and stakeholders and responding to the changing news agenda regarding child obesity and school food.

Securing high calibre support was key. We employed celebrities such as Frank Lampard and Konnie Huq and partner organisations that are respected and admired by young people to champion school meals and show how a healthy diet can play a part in success. Key to our messaging was the SFT proposition ‘Eat better, do better’.

When Disney released its phenomenally successful film High School Musical 3: Senior Year, we made sure that the SFT was at the heart of the hysteria – teaming up with Disney to launch a premiere ticket competition in school canteens which received 60,000 entrants, and securing filmed support from stars such as Zac Efron for online broadcast.

Unique for a marketing campaign, we were able to reach right into the heart of schools, hitting the actual canteens with posters, competitions and other point of sale marketing, and matching the kind of impactful marketing techniques used by fast food manufacturers.

We also targeted parents with hard-hitting research, creating national media stories on issues such as the scale of junk food temptation luring children off the school grounds at lunchtime and providing press office support to the SFT around key calendar dates such as the release of the annual take-up figures.

Over the three years Kindred worked with SFT, the campaign achieved a PR value of £42,975,420 with OTS of over 500 million giving the client a return on investment of 26:1.

In 2008 the School Food Trust reported the first increase in school meal take-up in primary schools since the nutritional standards were introduced, with around 50,000 more pupils eating school dinners every day compared to the previous year.