Win One, Give One Cause Marketing

We’ve talked about buy one give one cause marketing (BOGO). And buy one give one get one cause marketing (BOGOGO). Even buy one plant one (BOPO) cause marketing. Now Betty Crocker Fruit Rollups from General Mills offers WOGO; win one give one with the item in question being a XO laptop computer.

Here’s how it works. Inside specially-marked packages of 6 varieties of Fruit Rollups are certificates for a free XO computer. A total of 2001 XO computers will be given away in the sweepstakes. A matching number will be donated to children in Africa.

From December 1, 2010 through May 31, 2011, General Mills will also donate one dollar to One Laptop Per Child, the nonprofit organization behind the XO, for every Fruit Rollup coupon redeemed up to $4,000.

Winonegiveone.com, the promotion’s website, offers a third way for laptops to be donated to Africa. The site, which is targeted to kids and moms has a kind of Angry Birds-type game that allows you to propel a heroic action figure to Africa via a rocket, a catapult or a slingshot. For every 400 heroes that land in Africa, General Mills donates additional laptops up to 442 total. When I landed one on the continent the counter said that 160630 heroes had been sent so far, 90 percent of the goal.

Once in Africa you can explore a kind of digital diorama of Grahamstown, based on the actual city of 125,000 in the Eastern Cape of South Africa. There are more games, short videos, and easy-to-swallow didactic content. I learned, for instance, that South Africa has three capital cities and 11 official languages!

It was all great fun for this big kid. In fact, the only lame part was the FSI where I first spotted the earlier this month. Out of all the cool elements in the promotion, the FSI somehow manages to be boring.

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