Back to School is usually a time for brands to throw big sales and capitalize on the fact that moms and dads are rushing to the store to stock up on supplies for their kids. So, it was refreshing to see that a handful of companies are also using the time to show their charitable side. These companies are using Facebook for their cause related marketing campaigns, to highlight some causes they care about. Check them out:
In H & M’s charity campaign, they teamed with K.I.D.S./Fashion Delivers: for every denim item purchased by a customer from August 21st until September 3rd, they are donating a new denim item to someone in need. Their “Wear Denim, Share Denim” campaign applies for both in-store and online purchases.
Not only is this good for brand awareness for H & M, but it shows they care by involving K.I.D.S./Fashion Delivers– who aims to connect retailers and manufacturers with individuals impacted by poverty to receive new merchandise, from clothing to school supplies and books – and giving their organization visibility, too.
Now that’s a story about denim that doesn’t give me the blues! You can read more about the campaign here.
For Quaker Oats, fighting hunger is the cause of choice in their campaign, which has perfect synergy with this heart-healthy food brand. They are offering to donate to food banks
across Canada for every participant in their ‘Quaker Chewy for Charity’ contest. By submitting a photo or drawing of children’s art, uploaded via their special Facebook app created for this campaign, their customers were incented to “Show some lunch bag love.” (Cute slogan, eh?) Each upload can be used to create a customized lunch bag, and then 10 pounds of food will be donated to Food Banks Canada. Very interactive and creative… and the needy families across the country that benefit from this are the real winners.
Kleenex went a slightly different route than a traditional cause related marketing campaign: they decided to reach out to school administrators with a public health angle. Kleenex launched a campaign to get tissues on the back-to-school lists that schools and teachers send out to parents, with a stated agenda of supporting healthy kids in schools through better habits like using Kleenex. To incentivize schools to add Kleenex to their lists, they launched a sweepstakes with TeacherLists.com, an organization that connects parents with their kids’ school-supply and teacher wish lists.
Schools including Kleenex on their 2014-15 supply lists could win one of three $15,000 donations from Kimberly-Clark or a year’s supply of tissues — that’s a lot of tissues! And it’s a lot of exposure for Kleenex, via the teachers who were presented the incentive during their pre-year conferences and literature. Says Ketchum, the AOR for Kleenex, “Kleenex says it is cited on 65% of back-to-school lists posted on TeacherLists.com this
year, ahead of its target of 55% ..”
Hey, we all know that teachers are on the front lines of kid germs. This program by Kleenex was a really great way to take advantage of a bona fide retail opportunity by identifying a need in their target community and solving it. My cousin is a teacher, and she once told me that she always has the kids wipe their desks down with disinfecting wipes during cold & flu season; perhaps we’ll see wet wipes and Airborne on the must-have list next year.
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All of these companies are illustrating how a good PR program on a social channel can both start a positive brand dialogue, and lead to quantifiable ROI. By using their Pages to promote awareness via Facebook, customers are exposed to them at exponential rates and their cause related marketing stunts have done their jobs. For more on how to use your own Facebook Page for business, check out our newest e-book: Facebook for Business.
Are there any brands out there you’ve seen with cause-related campaigns that caught your attention? Let me know about them in the comments.