Holiday Activities and Food annual report 2025
Marketing
We adopted a multi-channel marketing approach to promote our 2025 Holiday Activities and Food (HAF) provision. Our strategy placed a strong emphasis on targeted communication, ensuring we maximised our reach among eligible families and increased awareness of the opportunities available across Gateshead. By focusing on more direct and personalised methods, we were able to connect more effectively with those most likely to benefit from the programme.
A key element of our approach was the use of our primary booking platform, HolidayActivities.com. This system plays a vital role in engaging families whose children are eligible for benefits-related free school meals and, therefore, qualify for HAF provision. Through this platform, we are able to streamline communication, promote available activities, and support families in accessing and booking provision with ease.
In addition, we strengthened our partnership working by collaborating closely with the Revenues and Benefits Team at Gateshead Council. This enabled us to deliver targeted communications directly to eligible households, ensuring that key information about the programme reached the right audiences in a timely and effective manner. By combining digital tools with established council networks, we were able to enhance both the visibility and accessibility of the HAF offer.
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.
2025 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
- branded HAF pop up stands which are used at activities and events.
- emails and SMS to FSM families
