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Project Overview
Australians are in the grip of an obesity epidemic. To drive awareness of this public health issue and give people the knowledge to make better food choices, the NSW Government has made the inclusion of kilojoule (kJ) content mandatory on the menu boards of larger fast food restaurants. Apparent created a rich mobile app to share this knowledge:
o Ideal figure calculator/Personalised profile
o 4,000 Fast Foods search
o Balance/Burn calculator
o Calorie/kJ Convertor
o Healthy choices resources
The app gives NSW residents the power to make informed fast food choices.
Project Commissioner
Project Creator
Team
Tom Hutton- Creative Director
Andrew Peel- Senior Designer
Ben Morrow- Senior Producer
Steve Hurley- Senior Copywriter
Terry Hibbert- Developer
Brianne Kimmel- Account Service
Project Brief
The legislation had been passed. The larger fast food chains were gearing up to change their menu boards to include kJ information. All that remained was the task of getting ordinary people to take notice, to care about why it’s a good idea to know your daily kJ intake figure.
The fact that our primary audience of ‘ordinary people’ were young men 18-24 (“I can eat anything I want”) made the task even more challenging.
So the brief that Apparent worked to was simple – give us a way of reaching young men so we can talk to them about a subject of which they have zero interest!
We knew to succeed we’d have to create a ‘go to’ tool for these guys BEFORE they headed to a fast food chain.
We knew it had to be easy to understand the benefits of using it.
We knew it had to be packed with easy to find info on the types of fast food they choose to eat so they could check on the kJ content of over 4,000 fast foods, before you decide to buy.
We knew that it had to go a step further and give them access to resources and tools and hints and tips to make healthier choices.
If the app could do all these things, then was a great chance of it becoming indispensable. We can happily say it can and it is.
Project Innovation / Need
As the first state to implement mandatory kJ labeling at large fast food chains, The NSW Food Authority launched the 8700 awareness campaign to educate consumers on kilojoules and the recent menu board changes.
A project like this had never been undertaken before within Australia so to build this app from scratch was a huge undertaking. Apparent needed an innovative approach to working in a unique collaboration between a government department and the 26 larger fast food chains that would be part of the new legislative requirements in the first stage of implementation.
It required us to build, from a zero base, the entire database of over 4,000 fast food chain menu items that would form the basis of the Food Search functionality of the app. The 4,000 item food database is sorted by specific fast food restaurant chains and food category. Users can search for specific menu items or search for a specific type of food- such as which fast food restaurant has the lowest kJ burger available.
Not only did it need to easily searched and cross referenced, it had to be dynamic to cope with changes as they happened at the participating fast food chains. Apparent’s innovative back end solution formed the basis of a robust, reliable tool that people could rely on to give them accurate, up to date information, no matter where their travels took them throughout NSW.
User Experience
The 8700 app is based around the assumption that (no matter how bullet proof you think you are) taking control of the things that can effect your health and being able to make informed choices easily, is important.
So ease of use was the watchwords that drove the user experience. The user can set up a customised a profile, based on their age, height, current weight level of physical activity in their job and their leisure hours and their desire to either lose, maintain or gain weight.
They can then easily work out their Ideal Figure – the daily kJ intake they need to hit their goal. And they also have the options of using the built in tools to search the 4,000+ fast food database, get tips on what they need to do to burn the kJ they eat and use the calorie to kJ converter to make it all come alive in plain English (Widespread confusion on what kilojoules are was found in consumer research).
The app interface is clean, uncluttered and logical, leading the user effortlessly through the various on board tools, all of which load with a minimum of fuss.
The multiple choices available to the user are easily accessed by keyword search or via a swipe and click tumbler device.
The design is optimised for speed, no extraneous bells and whistles that would slow down the experience or divert attention away from the information they want.
Project Marketing
The 8700 mobile app is one component to the state-wide campaign by the NSW Food Authority to:
1. increase awareness of kJ as units of energy in food and drink,
2. build awareness of the ideal figure of 8700kJ for the average Australian adult
3. encourage people to find out how many kilojoules they should be consuming per day to achieve or maintain a healthy weight.
The mobile application and campaign website were launched and marketed with a limited PR, OOH and radio advertising campaign for one month from March-April 2012. It targeted people when they were about to make decisions on the fast food they would eat - on radio and food-court shopalites and table tops. Ongoing marketing has been driven through WOM, limited Facebook advertising and an aggressive social media strategy.
Since launching the 8700 mobile app on 1st March 2012, 35,200 people have downloaded, created a profile and use the tools. There have been 135,025 unique visitors to 8700.com.au and over 5,000 likes on Facebook.
The 8700 app was ranked #1 in the iTunes Store under top free iPad Health & Fitness apps within the first week of its launch. It currently maintains that outstanding performance, still ranking in the top 25 free iPad Health and Fitness apps, four months after initial launch.
Progress against targets:
Mobile app download target- 10% of 186,000 projected click throughs: 18,600
Actual mobile app downloads: 35,200.
Tags
Nutrition
This category relates to applications that promote or provide a service around nutrition.
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