The Stamp Out Hunger Food Drive Needs to Be Made Remarkable Again

Saturday May 9, is the nationwide Stamp Out Hunger Food Drive in the United States. If you’re Stateside, before you read anything else in this post be sure and put together a bag of non-perishable food items. Then get it out at your mailbox before your mail carrier gets there May 9. Start on paragraph two when you get back

You back? Good. I hope you included lots of high protein items. If not, go find an unopened jar of peanut butter (in a plastic jar, please) and add it to the bag, then come back and start with the third paragraph.

With that out of the way let’s talk about what word of mouth guru Andy Sernovitz calls “The Chocolate Problem.” Nobody, Sernovitz points out, has ever emailed a friend and wrote in the subject line, “Have you ever tried this stuff called chocolate? It’s amazing!”

Whether you like or dislike it, everyone knows about chocolate. And this campaign from Cambell’s, the US Postal Service and the National Association of Letter Carriers has a bad case of the chocolate problem.

Stamp Out Hunger doesn’t need a new look or tagline, it doesn’t need broader media exposure, or better celebrity support, or new relevance; it couldn’t be more relevant than right now. Stamp Out Hunger needs something that makes it remarkable again. That is, something that makes people want to remark about it. It needs better word of mouth.

My specialty isn’t necessarily word of mouth marketing, but here are four ideas that could help make Stamp Out Hunger remarkable again.

It could use some really dramatic success stories captured on video. We frequently hear about hunger, but we seldom hear about people ‘graduating’ from hunger thanks to food donations. Yet as sure as I’m writing this there are thousands of people who were once hungry, got help, and are now on the giving instead of the receiving end of this equation. Such a story doesn’t diminish the need. Indeed, framed right, such stories would underscore that the system works. I’d Tweet a story like that.
The campaign could certainly humanize the letter carriers even more. Their images are plastered all over the post cards. But imagine something more. I suspect that there are letter carriers out there whose conscientiousness was raised by Stamp Out Hunger and who on their route noticed and personally did something about hunger. I’d post something on this blog about a letter carrier who personally intervened to help hungry children get fed.
Or how about this? I’ll bet there are letter carriers who consistently bring back way more food than the average carrier because they personally ask people on their route for help. That’s a nice a story that ought to be told and could go viral.
What about a contest element? What if on the postcard I received on Wednesday, May 6 there was a promotion for a contest of some kind. Nothing grandiose mind you, which would undermine the purpose. But suppose if you donated, say, 15 or more cans of food that you were entered into a contest to meet President Obama at a food bank in Washington, D.C., where you would work together for some period of time sorting donations. That would be pretty cool and it would attract good and appropriate media attention.

Someone like Andy Sernovitz could certainly come up with better ideas than these. But the point is this; Stamp Out Hunger is drifting right now. Someone needs to make it remarkable again.

Part 2: How Chili's Used Cause-Related Marketing to Raise $8.2 million for St. Jude

[Bloggers Note: In this second half of this post I discuss the nuts and bolts of how Chili's motivates support from its employees and managers and how St. Jude 'activates' support from Chili's. Read the first half here.] How does St. Jude motivate support from Chili’s front line employees and management alike? They call it ‘activation’ and they do so by the following: They share stories of St. Jude patients who were sick and got better thanks to the services they received at the hospital. Two stories in particular are personal for Chili’s staff. A Chili’s bartender in El Dorado Hills, California named Jeff Eagles has a younger brother who was treated at St. Jude. In both 2005 and 2006 Eagles was the campaign’s biggest individual fundraiser. John Griffin, a manager at the Chili’s in Conway, Arkansas had an infant daughter who was treated for retinoblastoma at St. Jude. They drew on the support Doug Brooks… the president and CEO of Brinker International, Chili’s parent co...

Cause-Related Marketing with Customer Receipts

Walgreens and JDRF Right now at Walgreens…the giant pharmacy and retail store chain with more than 5,800 stores in the United States and Puerto Rico… they’re selling $1 paper icons for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF). This is an annual campaign and I bought one to gauge how it’s changed over the years. (Short list… they don’t do the shoe as a die cut anymore; the paper icon is now an 8¾ x 4¼ rectangle. Another interesting change; one side is now in Spanish). The icon has a bar code and Jacob, the clerk, scanned it and handed me a receipt as we finished the transaction. At the bottom was an 800-number keyed to a customer satisfaction survey. Dial the number, answer some questions and you’re entered into a drawing for $10,000 between now and the end of September 2007. I don’t know what their response rate is, but the $10,000 amount suggests that it’s pretty low. Taco Bell’s survey gives out $1,000 per week. At a regional seafood restaurant they give me a code that garner...

An Interview with Cause-Related Marketing Pioneer Jerry Welsh

Jerry Welsh is the closest thing cause marketing has to a father. In 1983 after a number of regional cause-related marketing efforts, Welsh, who was then executive vice president of worldwide marketing and communications at American Express looked out his window in lower Manhattan at the Statue of Liberty. The Statue was then undergoing a major refurnishing, and in a flash Welsh determined to undertake the first modern national cause marketing campaign. I say modern because almost 100 years before in January 1885, the Statue of Liberty was sitting around in crates in New York warehouses because the organization building the pedestal ran out of money. And so Joseph Pulitzer, the publisher of the newspaper called The World , proposed a very grassroots solution reminiscent in its own way to Welsh’s cause-related marketing. Pulitzer ran an editorial promising he would print the name of everyone who donated even a penny. Sure enough pennies, along with dimes and nickels, quarters a...

Cause Marketing

Search This Blog