Perhaps you’ve seen A Place at the Table, the new feature-length documentary film about hunger in America. It comes from the same team that produced Food Inc. and has received positive press for its frank assessment of hunger, childhood obesity, and food assistance in the U.S.
If you missed it in theaters, you can now catch it on DVD or Blu-ray, where the film includes a Special Features section with a microdoc about one of our clients, Plum Organics. Landing a microdoc in a DVD that’s bound to get shelf time in tens of thousands of homes is an impressive (and well-deserved) accomplishment for the folks at Plum and their social impact program, The Full Effect. I’d like to take a moment to share how they pulled it off.
The first step was to leverage that all-too-familiar word: “Networking!”
“We take every opportunity we get to hear and share how we and others are fighting hunger in America, and we’ve made some wonderful friends and supporters because of it,” says Neil Grimmer, Plum’s CEO and Co-founder and the visionary behind its social impact program. “Enthusiasm is contagious and passion shows.”
In this case, a common friend connected Plum with Participant Media (the producers behind A Place at the Table), and shortly thereafter the vice president of business development was in the Plum office for a private screening.
“We were blown away by the issues it highlighted,” Neil says. “It immediately galvanized us forward on our social mission and helped define the program we now know as The Full Effect.”
After the initial connection had materialized and Plum had launched its program, Plum returned to Participant Media with a detailed vision for how they could help the film and the film could help them. The Full Effect offered to do a national promotion for A Place at the Table so that, amongst other things, for every movie ticket, online download, or companion book sold, Plum Organics would donate a Super Smoothie (their nutrition pouch designed to ease the nutrient deficiencies of a food insecure baby) to a baby or toddler in need. In 2013 alone, Plum has committed to donating 500,000 Super Smoothies, and a minimum of 100,000 will go toward the partnership with A Place at the Table.
In return, Plum secured a valuable platform to ensure distribution of their social innovation and an equally valuable platform to increase viewership of their microdoc. Participant Media is “excited to share with viewers programs that are working towards alleviation of the critical issues highlighted by the film,” Neil says.
