MESSAGing Guide | June 2008
INTRODUCTION
MESSAGES
Communications includes anything you say, write and show people about your issue or cause. It includes internal and external communications and can mean anything from how you structure a meeting to how you describe the initiative in print materials.
This booklet focuses on messages. Messages tell the who, what, when, where and why of Food & Fitness.
The 5 M’s are a great place to begin thinking about how strategic communications can help your collaborative. They include:
Market: the people you want to reach
Message: the point you want to communicate
Messenger: the person who delivers your message
Medium: the general method you believe will best convey your message
Materials: the specific tools you use to communicate
your message
Why do we need messaging? Messages help build a shared understanding of the issues and cultivate consistency in all internal and external communications. They do this by:
Telling a consistent story Speaking directly to the interests of the people you want to reach Emphasizing your strengths Distinguishing your efforts from others Motivating support for your effort
How should I use this booklet? Everyone affiliated with your collaborative is a messenger for the initiative. Creating a common language allows staff members, partners and others to be powerful voices for change. This booklet contains a message framework that can serve as a foundation for the common language you need to get started. The values, personality and other traits on the following pages reflect the national initiative, and serve as examples for your team to define your own. Distribute this booklet among collaborative members and stakeholders. Use it to help describe the initiative or as a starting point in tailoring messages for your unique audiences.
How should I use these messages? These messages can provide the narrative thread for describing Food & Fitness and your collaborative. They will help you tell the story. EXAMPLE: Talking to prospective partners EXAMPLE: Drafting brochures, flyers or other print materials EXAMPLE: Creating website content EXAMPLE: Describing your work in both formal and informal settings—from meetings with stakeholders to gatherings with community members or youth 1
W.K. Kellogg Foundation Food & Fitness
What is our message framework? Vision: This answers the question of why you do what you do. It
inspires and articulates your collaborative’s desired future reality.
VALUES
PERSONALITY
Community Family Sustainability Stewardship Equity Interdependency
Visionary Bold Collaborative Passionate
Mission: This statement quickly answers the question of what you do. Values: These are the principles that motivate you. You should limit yourself to your top five values. Personality: These traits are the qualities you want associated
with the initiative. They’re also the qualities that should be conveyed when you communicate about your work.
VISION Vibrant communities that provide equitable access to affordable, healthy, locally grown food and safe and inviting places for physical activity and play.
Elevator/Crosswalk statement (verbal and written):
This short statement describes the work. It should grab attention and say a lot in a few words. Audiences: This is your market—the key people you want your
messages to reach. Remember: The general public is too broad to be an audience. High-level messages: These are the messages you should primarily use to communicate about the initiative. Issue-specific messages: These messages provide a foundation
for speaking about food systems and the built environment and physical activity.
MISSION To support local collaboratives as they work to improve the environments that impact their communities’ health and quality of life.
ELEVATOR STATEMENTS: WRITTEN: Food & Fitness is an initiative of the W.K. Kellogg Foundation to create vibrant communities with equal access to affordable, healthy, locally grown food and safe and inviting places for physical activity and play. Nine communities across the country have been selected to become models of community change. They are forming local collaboratives to improve the health and quality of life in their communities by transforming their food and fitness environments. VERBAL: Food & Fitness is a national initiative of the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. It’s about people working together to create vibrant communities where the healthy choice is the easy choice. Nine sites are being funded to form local collaboratives and develop community action plans. The goal is to improve food and fitness environments through policy and systems change.
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HIGH-LEVEL MESSAGES Why Food & Fitness is Important
Policy change is an important driver in transforming our food and fitness environments.
The places we live, learn, work and play affect our health.
From Safe Route to School to the Child Nutrition Act, we can inform policymakers about opportunities to transform the food and fitness opportunities in the places we live, learn, work and play.
We all benefit from improving our food and fitness environments.
Together, we can create healthy places for all.
Being healthy is more than a matter of personal choice.
The quality of our food and fitness environments—whether we have access to affordable, healthy, locally grown food and places to be active and play—impacts our health and quality of life.
To be healthy, people need places that support healthy choices.
Affordable, healthy food and safe and accessible opportunities for physical activity—both essential to good health—are scarce in many places.
Food & Fitness
Grocery stores, farmers markets, active recreation centers, and neighborhoods with sidewalks and safe streets do not exist in all communities.
Food & Fitness is investing locally in collaborative efforts dedicated to changing the policies, practices and systems that prevent communities from being healthy.
Lack of access to healthy food options and safe opportunities to be active and play contributes to health disparities and increased rates of heart disease, diabetes and childhood obesity.
Nine communities across the country have been selected to become models of change.
The Foundation is funding these nine communities to create eight-year action plans that will guide sustainable improvements to their food and fitness environments.
All children deserve to grow up in places that support being healthy.
Yet children today belong to the first generation with a lower life expectancy than their parents
We must change how our food arrives in our stores and on our table so that everyone has access to affordable, healthy, locally grown food.
We must improve how our communities are maintained and built so all children and families have safe places to be active and play.
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The W.K. Kellogg Foundation Food & Fitness initiative is about people working together to create vibrant communities where healthy eating and physical activity are convenient, affordable, and safe for all children and families.
Food & Fitness is dedicated to addressing racial, social and economic disparities by promoting equitable access to healthy food and opportunities for physical activity and play.
Food & Fitness is focused on transforming the policies, practices and systems that shape our food and fitness environments to bring about sustainable community change.
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Collaboration and equity are at the core of this initiative.
Engagement of youth, families and community leaders is central to achieving the vision of the initiative.
Authentic engagement across all socioeconomic levels, ages, and ethnic and racial groups will ensure that all community members have a voice in determining the future of their neighborhoods.
The initiative is supporting long-lasting and sustainable change by investing in community-based solutions to transform local food and fitness environments.
How It Will Take Place on the Ground We are one of nine communities chosen to be part of Food & Fitness, a national initiative of the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.
Our community was chosen because we demonstrated a commitment to collaboration and a capacity to transform the food and fitness environments in our community.
We have received a two-year grant to create an eight-year action plan with the potential for implementation support.
Together, we will create a plan to influence policy and practice so that everyone can be active and have access to affordable, healthy, locally grown food.
Our two-year community action plan will focus on improving the policies, practices and systems that determine how food arrives on our table and how our communities are maintained and built.
These changes will help create and enhance communities where everyone has access to healthy and affordable food.
They will help create more walkable communities where children and families can be safe, active and engage in outdoor play together.
Through collaboration and innovation we can become a model for other communities around the country.
We will all benefit from improving our food and fitness environments.
We have already accomplished [include several examples of innovative community projects or policies]
We are building a local collaborative that will plan, implement and sustain improvements to the places we live, learn, work and play.
Our collaborative is composed of youth, nonprofit organizations, community members, businesses and government.
We are working with individuals and organizations from all sectors of our community, from transportation to public health, from agriculture to education, and from our businesses to our faith communities.
We are engaging community members, who know what changes are needed on the ground to create healthy environments.
Youth are central to our work, offering us new and profound perspectives on how to improve our food and fitness environments.
Together, we are developing a pathway for everyone to have a voice in creating a new vision for our community.
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ISSUE-SPECIFIC MESSAGES Built Environment and Physical Activity To be healthy, people need places that support healthy choices.
Being physically active is more than a matter of personal choice.
The built environment—meaning the places and spaces made or modified by people—can either encourage or discourage physical activity.
It’s the difference between playing in a safe, well-maintained neighborhood park versus passing abandoned lots and asphalt on your way home.
Parks, trails, active recreation centers and neighborhoods with sidewalks and safe streets do not exist in many underserved areas.
When communities are denied these resources, active choices become the hard choices.
We need to ensure that all children and families have safe and inviting places to play and be active.
All children deserve to grow up in environments that support being healthy and active.
Building and restoring neighborhoods with safe streets and quality parks and playgrounds will invite everyday activity. Creating spaces for residents to gather and be active and play will strengthen communities.
It’s also about getting around—being able to walk to school, bike to work or simply run errands without being forced to drive.
Lack of access to safe and convenient opportunities for physical activity and play results in poorer quality of life and increased rates of heart disease, diabetes and childhood obesity.
Policy change is an important driver in creating activity friendly environments.
Opportunities for physical activity have been designed out of many of the places we live, learn, work and play.
Many schools lack playgrounds or have eliminated P.E., erasing opportunities for kids to play and be healthy.
Sprawl and transportation and land use policies that favor cars over people have made active choices the hard choices.
In many communities, parks, playgrounds and recreation centers are inaccessible or disconnected from neighborhoods.
While a lack of opportunities for physical activity and play is a problem across the nation, some communities are worse off than others.
Low-income communities and communities of color have fewer resources and opportunities than more affluent communities.
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As examples:
Nationally, we can inform policymakers about the importance of federal programs like Safe Routes to Schools.
Regionally, we can inform policymakers OR Tribal Council members about the need for greater walking, biking and other active transportation facilities.
Locally, we can inform policymakers OR Tribal Council members about the importance of zoning codes and other policies that make it possible to work, shop, play and go to school within walking distance of our homes.
We all benefit from working to transform the places we live, learn, work and play.
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Food System People need access to affordable, nutritious food in order to make healthy food choices.
Our current food system favors some crops and agricultural practices over others, making high-calorie, processed foods the affordable choice.
Governmental food policies disproportionately fund cash crops like corn and soy over a diversity of fruit and vegetables that are essential to a healthy diet. This creates an imbalanced food system that makes unhealthy, processed foods the available and affordable choices.
Healthy eating is more than a matter of personal choice.
The availability and cost of nutritious food in our communities can either encourage or discourage healthy eating.
People living in neighborhoods without affordable, healthy food have increased rates of heart disease, diabetes and childhood obesity.
Our current food system harms the planet and is unsustainable due to the effects of climate change.
A food system includes the who, what, where, when and why of our food as it travels from farm to fork.
This means all the interconnected steps that go into growing, harvesting, transporting, processing, marketing, retailing and consuming what we eat.
From processing and distribution practices that use lots of energy to industrial farming methods that contaminate our soil, water and air and threaten our plant and animal diversity, our current food system is polluting our planet and contributing to climate change.
In the future, current areas of high fruit and vegetable production may not support existing levels of production due, in part, to climate change effects on water availability.
A sustainable food system is more community-based and supports direct connections between famers and consumers.
Our current food system leaves some communities without access to affordable, healthy, locally grown food.
We need to transform our nation’s food system to protect our planet and ensure that healthy food is affordable and accessible for all now and in the future.
All children deserve to grow up in environments that support healthy eating.
Improving our nation’s food system will create strong and healthy people and a strong and healthy environment now and in the future.
Some communities are designed and built with many nutritious foods options, while others can be described as food deserts, meaning an area without access to healthy food.
In too many neighborhoods, gas stations and ill-stocked convenience stores are the only available and affordable sources of food.
In others, families must travel twice as long to get fresh fruits and vegetables than they would to find a fast food chain.
When people don’t have easy access to good food, healthy choices become the hard choices.
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Community-based food systems are essential to creating healthy communities.
Identity
From increasing local farms and farmers markets to building urban gardens, every community has a unique capacity to produce their own food.
Buying and selling locally produced food can help strengthen and rebuild the local economy by creating and keeping money and jobs in the community.
This identity has been developed as a simple wordmark for Food & Fitness. While your collaborative is NOT obligated to use it, it may be useful as a stamp to compliment your materials and reinforce your connection to the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and the national initiative.
Community-based food systems can help revitalize neighborhoods and improve residents’ health by making healthy choices the easy choices.
Policy change is an important driver in improving our food system.
Wordmark Always use the workmark lockup as the first choice.
As examples:
Nationally, we can inform policymakers about opportunities to improve the quality of foods in schools through changes to the Child Nutrition Act.
Regionally, we can inform policymakers OR Tribal Council members about opportunities to preserve farmland, encourage local farmers to grow more fruits and vegetables and help grow a new generation of farmers.
Locally, we can inform policymakers OR Tribal Council members about the importance of supporting the entrepreneurship that’s already happening by helping stores expand their purchasing practices to include more fresh foods.
However, when there’s not enough room, use the workmark by itself.
Color palette
Pantone 362 U
a friendly, healthy green
Primary Colors
Pantone 322 U
Secondary Color
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Pantone 609 U
a vibrant deep green/blue
a versatile, cheerful wheat-like yellow/gold
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Learn more online at www.wkkf.org/faf
This is a living document These messages are not set in stone. They will evolve throughout Food & Fitness as we—and you—learn more about what works and what doesn’t. As you use the messages, please share with us what you’re learning and we will promise to do the same. Messages in this guide are informed by communications best practices and research from the FrameWorks Institute. For help customizing messages for your community's unique audiences, feel free to contact your communications technical assistance and planning (TAP) partners at Pyramid Communications.