Guiding Stars

Project Overview

Guiding Stars helps lead shoppers, producers, and retailers to the most nutritious foods in grocery stores and food service settings. Using a patented, evidence-based algorithm, they analyze individual products to determine the nutrients our bodies need and compare them with the amounts of nutrients we should limit. Foods that meet the baseline threshold for net positive nutritional attributes receive a good, better, or best rating (one, two, or three stars). Guiding Stars has a positive communication, only pointing out which foods meet net positive nutritional criteria. Our first challenge was to create a 30-second video to play during the 2021 Partnership for Healthier America conference to build awareness and excitement about Guiding Stars. Attendees included C-level and director-level staff from non-profits as well as outreach and sustainability leadership from consumer packaged goods companies (Pepsi, McDonalds, Nabisco, etc.). The trick was trying to explain a complicated system and how it benefits many stakeholders in the simplest way possible. The answer was an animated video with a stylized mechanical scale weighing each product’s good and bad ingredients, pulled from its nutrition label, to illustrate how each food is graded.

Our second challenge was a 45-second video to explain Guiding Stars and motivate retail store associates to use it in stores and online. The video needed to help associates understand what Guiding Stars is, how it helps them, why they should care, and where to find it. Basically, “get them excited!” To do this, the video needed to show customers and store employees interacting with each other, and with the Guiding Stars-labeled products. Continuing the animated style of the conference video, we introduced more robust characters and deepened the detail, showing how and where the products were labeled. By portraying the associates as knowledgeable and helpful, we connected the good information they provide with good health for everyone.