Holiday Activities and Food annual report
Marketing
To promote our HAF programme we have a dedicated Brighten the Day webpage. The website features a promotional video for Brighten the Day, activities for families to get involved in outside of the HAF programme and details of the latest programme with how to book.
This booking page is on a hidden part of the website and a link is given to families in receipt of free school meals so they can access activities in advance. Only when most of the spaces are booked is the page made public so any family can book.
Four weeks before each holiday period we send out an email to all the families we have details for who we know have a free school meals qualified child in their family. This email contains a link to the hidden part of the website. This is then supplemented by a text message to the same families in the following week to encourage more bookings.
Other marketing activity included:
- articles on the council's news story web pages
- press release on funding and activities released to local media
- stories in Council News, our resident's magazine which is distributed to over 95,000 households across Gateshead
- articles in Gateshead Now, our digital e-newsletter which has over 34,000 subscribers
- articles in our internal employee bulletin, distributed to over 4,000 staff
- social media via our corporate Facebook and X social media pages, (29,000 and 22,100 followers respectively)
- branded HAF pop up stands which are used at activities and events