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GroundTruth and No Kid Hungry COVID-19 Relief

In March 2020, as New York City schools closed overnight and millions of children lost access to the free meals they relied on, I saw an opportunity to do something. I originated and led GroundTruth's Location for Good program response to the COVID-19 crisis — reaching out to our existing nonprofit partner No Kid Hungry and proposing a campaign that would use our location technology to connect families experiencing food insecurity with free meal distribution sites in their neighborhoods. We also partnered with the City of New York to expand our reach to the communities hit hardest. This was not a brief that came down from above. It was an idea I had, pushed for internally, and drove to launch during the most acute weeks of the pandemic.

Using Location to Connect Families with Food The campaign used GroundTruth's hyper-local mobile targeting to serve ads and real-time notifications to people in New York City neighborhoods with the highest rates of food insecurity — directing them to the nearest free meal pickup sites. Audiences were segmented by location and demographics to ensure we reached the families most likely to need help and least likely to have other resources. The campaign ran for one month. Click-through rates among Spanish-speaking and African-American audiences exceeded 0.64%, well above industry benchmark — a signal that the right message was reaching the right people at the right moment.

Real Impact. A Drum Award. And a Model Worth Repeating. The campaign drove thousands of visits to meal distribution sites across New York City and reached tens of thousands of unique users during the peak of the pandemic. It earned a Drum Award for community impact — one of the most recognized honors in marketing and media. More importantly, it demonstrated what brand communications can do when it's pointed at something that actually matters. This is the kind of work I believe in: using the tools available, at the moment they're needed, to make something real happen.