A Clever Cause Marketing Campaign from Snickers and Feeding America

Back in August I bought this cause-marketed Snickers bar during my fourth trip of the day to Home Depot. (Is it even possible to do home repairs and take care of all your needs with just one trip to Home Depot/Lowes?)

Here’s how it works: Snickers is donating the cost of 2.5 million meals to Feeding America, the nation’s leading hunger-relief charity. On the inside of the wrapper is a code. Text that code to 45495… or enter it at snickers.com… and Snickers will donate the cost of one meal to Feeding America, up to one million additional meals.

The Feeding America website says that each dollar you donate provides seven meals. So Snickers donation might be something like $500,000. But I like that Snickers quantified its donations in terms of meals made available, rather than dollars. That’s much more concrete.

It doesn’t hurt that 3.5 million is a much bigger number than $500,000.

I also like the way they structured the donation. By guaranteeing 2.5 million meals, the risk of a poor response to the offer is mitigated for Feeding America. Likewise the risk that the promotion could take off leaving Snickers on the hook for a much bigger donation is also allayed.

Feeding America is the biggest player in this space and the right partner for Snickers, which positions itself as the snack that ‘handles your hunger.’

Meanwhile, it would appear that Snickers gets your cell phone number for marketing back to you. I hope Snickers shares that information with Feeding America.

This promotion also helps Snickers against upstarts like Kind Healthy Snacks, which is an active cause marketer.

All in all, an impressive effort.

Comments

Joe Hamm said…

Great article! Keep up the great work:)

9/26/2010 6:58 PM

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