What is Veganuary?
Veganuary is the name of a charity and campaign that encourages people to try a vegan lifestyle (i.e. to ‘go vean’ by not eating or using animal products) for the month of January.
From a Veganuary UK campaign in 2014, participation has doubled every year and it’s now a world-wide campaign. Common elements of the campaign include veganuary recipes, a veganuary meal plan, and veganuary deals.
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Veganuary Meaning
The word “Veganuary” is a combination of ‘vegan’ and ‘january’. Starting in 2014, it’s a popular campaign that encourages people to go vegan in January for the whole month.
The Veganuary campaign aims to inspire and support people to try vegan for January and throughout the rest of the year. They have a website where people can register to take up the Veganuary challenge. “Signing up to Veganuary” means that someone has registered to try a vegan lifestyle for the month of January.
The campaign also helps business understand how to provide vegan goods and services for consumers. A business can also sign up to Veganuary, which means they will change their goods and services to 100% vegan for the month.
Veganuary 2020 Statistics
The video below provides the latest Veganuary 2020 stats.
As a brand and a campaign, you may be surprised by the statistics and momentum.
The most recent year’s campaign achieved a media reach of over 12.34 Billion, and participants signed up from 193 countries. Plus, 650 new vegan products were launched.
Veganuary Advert
The success is surprising given the grass-roots vegan marketing approach they’ve used to-date.
In 2020, the campaign took things up a notch and released its first official advertisement.
The ad was produced in both English and German versions.
What does this mean for my business?
If your business is wanting to offer plant-based options and enter the vegan market, January is a great time to do it!
And, if you’re a vegan business or already providing vegan options then you have a great chance to promote and renew your offering.
Here’s what you need to know, so you can take action:
Corporate Collaborations
As a charity, Veganuary wants their participants to have a great Veganuary journey. So, they’ve created a collaboration program to help businesses and bloggers to effectively take part in the campaign and attract new customers.
The Veganuary corporate collaborations program is free to join.
You’ll get a Business Support Toolkit that explains how you can get involved.
Veganuary Logo and Brand Assets
Veganuary logo and brand assets are free to use, as long as you follow their guidelines.
The Veganuary Marketing assets are available for download here.
Veganuary Deals
Special deals are a key feature of this campaign. What sort of deals could you run for the month?
If you’re looking for inspiration, have a look at the deals and new product launches that have been offered by Nandos, McDonalds, Greggs, and Tesco. Their promotions have attracted a lot of search activity in Google.
If you run an organic grocery store or blog, look for examples of promotions that include a Veganuary shopping list or coupons.
You can also brainstorm ideas with us.
Promotion
If you choose to collaborate, you can contact them to ask them to feature your logo and a link to your website on their website.
You can expect that their website content will also be included in their email series that shows participants where they can find great vegan options.
You could also get to be one of the featured ‘selected offers’, coupons or ‘eating out’ sections of their site.
Send a press release, website content link, and two high resolution images to news@veganuary.com if you want to be featured in their PR news channels.
Veganuary Tips
Here are our top tips for success in 2021:
- The earlier you brainstorm ideas, develop your content, and prepare your press releases the better! Things get super busy in the lead-up to Veganuary!
- Run a competition or involve your target market and customers in your Veganuary deal development.
- Engage a vegan marketing agency or plant-based marketing specialist like jacoi to help you understand the market quickly.
Additional Information and References
Below, you’ll find extra information about the global reach of this campaign and the collection of recipes it provides.
Veganuary Recipes
Veganuary provides recipes for every meal of the day and for use all year.
These are worth considering if you have a takeaway or other food business or blog.
Veganuary recipes include vegan versions of traditional dishes including the following cuisine:
- The UK (British)
- America (American)
- Italy (Italian)
- Japan (Japanese)
- Mexico (Mexican)
- Thailand and South East Asia (Thai and South East Asian)
- India (Indian)
- South America (South American)
- Turkey and the Middle East (Turkish and Middle Eastern)
- China (Chinese)
- Spain (Spanish)
- France (French)
- The Carribbean (Carribbean)
- Africa (African)
- Germany (German)
- North Africa (North African)
- Ireland (Irish)
- Eastern Europe (East European)
- Jamaica (Jamaican)
- Portugal (Portuguese)
They also have recipe collections for Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving, Meat Free Monday, Wicked Healthy, pregnancy, raw vegan, and more!
The Veganuary Book
Veganuary has published a book!
As a Vegan Marketer, pay close attention to the Veganuary meal plans and other tips. You could benefit if you provide similar meals and products to people as part of your Veganuary offers and camaigns.
It’s called:
How To Go Vegan: The why, the how, and everything you need to make going vegan easy.
This great guide is published as a hardcopy, kindle edition, and audio book.
It covers topics including:
- Why try vegan?
- Vegan at home
- Vegan out in the world
- Living the vegan lifestyle
You can easily buy the Veganuary Book through Amazon.
Veganuary UK, Veganuary Australia, and beyond.
While Veganuary UK and Veganuary Australia are the best known campaigns, world-wide interest is growing.
But I hear you say, “is the interest strong in my region?”
So, we did market research to see where the interest in Veganary deals and information most concentrated around the world. Google Trends have a measure for this, which is a 1-100 scale.
Google explains: “A higher value means a higher proportion of all queries, not a higher absolute query count. So a tiny country where 80% of the queries are for ‘bananas’ will get twice the score of a giant country where only 40% of the queries are for ‘bananas’.”
So, this measure will tell you where there is a high intensity of search activity within a region.
We like to think of it as a bit of a proxy measusure for the proportion of the population who is interested.
What does the data show?
We found that the regions with the most intense activity over the last 5 years in order of activity intensity level were:
- Jersey
- United Kingdom
- St Helena
- Ireland
In the second highest group, in order of activity intensity level, we have:
- Switzerland (Veganuary Schweiz)
- Australia
- South Africa
- New Zealand
- United Arab Emirates
- Germany
And finally, regions where there appears to be emerging activity include:
- Portugal
- Singapore
- Sweden
- Norway
- Chile
- Netherlands
- Canada
- Austria
- Belgium
- Slovakia
- Hungary
- United States
- Denmark
- Spain
- Finland
- Philippines
Surprised? We were!
We found something else too. Overall, London has been the city with the highest intensity of search activity in the world. That’s not really a surprise, given the strength of the Veganuary UK movement!
If you would like to see the current live data, click here.
Veganuary SG
Veganuary SG is an independently organised Veganuary campaign in Singapore.
It is managed by Animal Allies Singapore, which is a programme of the Centre for a Responsible Future (a registered charity).
As per the wider Veganuary campaign, you’ll get a month of free resources if you sign up.
Veganuary USA
One of the major growth markets for Veganuary is the USA.
The special Veganuary USA site is: https://us.veganuary.com/
It has a similar design to the UK site. The USA Veganuary Team covers both the USA and Canada.
Veganuary Jobs
If you’re looking to hire staff to help you with your marketing campaign, use the keywords ‘veganuary jobs’.
People search for jobs to get involved!
Our Ultimate Guide to Vegan Jobs and Careers has more information on when Veganuary jobs are advertised.
How do you pronounce Veganuary?
Veganuary is simply pronounced ‘vee-gan-uary’.
