A little while ago, we contacted officials with Feeding America Tampa Bay about profiling the food bank for last month's Food Issue. The agency's development director, Debbie McCarthy, said our interest in the feature story coincided with the agency's desire to start getting the word out about all it does to feed the hungry in the Tampa Bay area.
Today, there is news that the hunger-relief organization will be teaming up with local ad agency ChappellRoberts to generate more awareness about their efforts.
"We supply more than 60 percent of the emergency food in our area, yet by and large, we go virtually unnoticed by the general public," said Thomas Mantz, executive director of Feeding America Tampa Bay, in a press release. "Our relationship with ChappellRoberts will help Feeding America Tampa Bay become the unified voice for the region’s hungry people as we bring this issue to the forefront."
ChappellRoberts said they will provide "their expertise in branding, marketing, public relations and digital" to develop an advertising campaign for Feeding America Tampa Bay that will officially launch in September.
Feeding America Tampa Bay is one of 202 local food banks belonging to Feeding America, a national agency that supplies food to tens of millions of Americans every year. It serves a large swatch of West Central Florida, ranging from Citrus County to Polk County to Manatee County, helping more than 700,000 people who go hungry every year.
Part of the lack of awareness of the group is that they previously were known as America's Second Harvest up until they changed their name in 2008.
"Before now, the real Feeding America Tampa Bay story and its selfless commitment to the community have not been shared broadly," said Colleen Chappell, president and CEO of ChappellRoberts. "Our goal is to highlight the great work these people do and change the public's perceptions about what the 'face' of hunger really looks like."