The PB&J Campaign fills a niche in a unique and engaging way. It uses America’s favorite and best-known sandwich as an icon for plant-based eating.
It focuses on the environmental benefits of eating plant-based meals and takes a soft-sell approach, incorporating humor, recipes, and fun facts about PB&J eating with its more serious message of using fewer resources by eating animal-free meals.
This strategy has paid off. The biggest day of the year for the PB&J Campaign is National Peanut Butter and Jelly Day on April 2 (mark your calendars).
Groups in various parts of the country hold events on this day to promote plant-based eating; participating groups include campus cafeterias, banks, and schools – all very mainstream organizations.
The PB&J Campaign also features its “PB&J Pledge” on its website: People pledge to eat a certain number of animal-free breakfasts, lunches, and dinners, respectively, each week. Every six months, we let them know how much water and land resources they’ve saved because of their conscientious decision, and thank them for being awesome.
In 2013, the PB&J Campaign added a focus on how we can feed more people through plant-based food – including peanut butter, a relatively cheap, high-calorie, good-tasting, and nutritious food.
We underscored this by making donations to food drives, disaster relief, and food banks.
The PB&J Campaign has developed productive, synergistic relationships with several peanut butter manufactures, and this helps us “spread” the word and facilitate food donations.
For 2014 and beyond, we’ve become more interactive. We increased our coordination with groups and individuals who want to do something for National Peanut Butter and Jelly Day; more trivia contests (with prizes), more outreach to peanut butter companies and corporate food managers; two-way communication with folks who take the PB&J Pledge. We also expanded our series on “champion PB&J eaters” on the blog. We made it easier for people to buy our popular PB&J Campaign tee shirts (fun but with a message).
And like another of our successful programs – the Worldwide Vegan Bake Sale – we plan to keep the serious message simple and doable: Save the world with PB&J (and other simple plant-based meals). We will continue to mix fun and impact. This seems to work!