NARRATIVE CHANGE CAMPAIGN
Case study: Oregon Food Bank’s Rethink Hunger campaign
Oregon Food Bank · Rethink Hunger
4.8M
Impressions
97.65%
Streaming completion rate
Benchmark: 80–90%
$0.18
Cost per click
Benchmark: $2.90
60,000+
New people brought to the campaign
Goals
Shift the public conversation toward the root causes of hunger. Grow Oregon Food Bank’s community beyond its existing base.
Oregon Food Bank set out to change how Oregonians understand hunger: as the outcome of systems and policy, not personal circumstance. Research showed the target audience already believed in food access, but hadn’t made that connection yet, and responded better to real stories than to advocacy messaging. So the campaign was built around real people telling their own stories.
Audience
Oregonians outside the existing donor base: rural communities and Spanish-speaking audiences, reached through messengers they already trust, in their own language.
The films
Casting was strategic. Each person was chosen for the audience they represented, how well their story fit the campaign’s themes, and the ease and honesty they brought in front of a camera.
From films to ads
Every campaign film ran close to two minutes. From those, we cut :15 and :30 ads for paid media, in English and Spanish.
Anita, a nurse
We Did Everything Right
A medical crisis and a lapsed insurance policy left Anita, a former nurse, and her husband, a healthcare worker, without enough to eat for the first time.
Jackie, a mother on the Oregon coast
Live Life,
Not Survive Life
Raising a child with special needs, Jackie faces hard choices about what her family can afford.
Maxi, a farmer
La comida
queda al final
Maxi grows food in Gresham and works closely with her community, her own hardship reflected in theirs.
How Do I
Feed My Family?
Ezequiel tells the story of a man who arrived in Ontario, Oregon with nothing, and shows what it’s like when there are no safety nets.
The results
May 18 to July 31, 2026, with the final flight still to run:
1M+
Completed video views
60,000+
New people brought to the campaign
97.65%
Streaming completion rate
Benchmark: 80–90%
4.8M
Impressions across streaming,
Meta, and Google
$0.18
Cost per click
Benchmark: $2.90
The conversation moved
Against a pre-campaign baseline of 3,482 comments, the campaign tracked audience comments for tone and topic. The leading topics became lived experience, community, access, and affordability: the structural causes the campaign set out to name. The conversation shifted to hunger, policy, and each other, right where it was meant to go.