About Share Our Strength

No Kid Hungry Brand Defines Our Priority to End Childhood Hunger

The new Share Our Strength logo and tagline leaves no doubt about our focus: to make sure no kid in America grows up hungry.

In 2008, Share Our Strength unveiled a new brand identity to reinforce our priority to end childhood hunger in America. The new identity extends to all Share Our Strength programs and events, and strengthens our message in the minds of all who experience it.

What Our Brand Means

Our new logo combines the problem of childhood hunger and the solutions in one image. It juxtaposes negative space with positive to convey the jarring dissonance of the issue: In the world’s wealthiest nation, millions of children know the risk of hunger…yet the solution is surprisingly sensible and simple, as are the distinctive elements of the logo:

• The apple is a universally recognized symbol of health, healthy food and education.
• The positive space of the apple core symbolizes the substance of the solution: Share Our Strength’s powerful and effective strategy to end childhood hunger in America, and the role of knowledge and education within the strategy.
• The bites taken out of the apple sharply represent the absence of healthy food in the lives of children and the adults who care for them.
• The negative space of the apple reveals the faces of an adult and a child, reinforcing the devastating dimensions of hunger and the invisibility of the problem: Few Americans see hunger in this country for what it really is. It also suggests a conversation between the two –about the problem and Share Our Strength’s solutions.

All of our programs use this same logo (in their own distinctive colors) to connect them to each other and to Share Our Strength, and to reinforce the critical role that each plays in our priority to end childhood hunger in America.

The Role Our Brand Plays

Creating a new identity is serious business, especially for an organization that’s been known in the same way for its entire life of more than 20 years. It was the seriousness of our new priority — to make sure that no kid in American grows up hungry – that told us we needed the change. We needed a brand identity strong enough, compelling enough, powerful and engaging enough to carry the weight of the issue and the strength of the solution on its shoulders. Our earlier identity had worked hard over the past 20 years, but we needed more muscle to not only help us represent the work ahead, but also inspire a new generation to join us.

We hired SS+K, a New York strategic communications firm whose client roster includes the Lance Armstrong Foundation Live Strong yellow bracelet campaign and Bono’s “One” campaign, to lead us to a new identity that would:

• Create a stronger link between our organization, our work and the impact of that work.
• Demonstrate our leadership within the anti-hunger community.
• Ensure our relevance to a new generation (GenX parents).
• Maintain our appeal with our core audience (Boomer foodies).
• Create a unified look and feel among all Share Our Strength properties.
• Create an exciting, engaging image that our partners would want to adopt.

It was a rigorous, strategic process that lasted more than two years, and provided clear direction for bringing more caring Americans to the cause of ending childhood hunger in this country.

Beyond the Look

With our new look comes a renewed energy, passion and belief in the strengths we all share.

Our manifesto of The Invisible Hunger gives new voice to the issue at hand and our solution.

Our deeper understanding of the strengths shared among our current and new audiences brings new ways of communicating (especially through the web), new ways of raising funds (have you heard about Share Our Strength’s Great American Dine Out or our e-card campaigns?) and new ways of accounting for the work that is done in our name.

Our new look and language powerfully communicate our focus. Our focus drives our work. Our work creates a new reality: No Kid Hungry. Please join us. Get Involved »