The Generous Store was a pop-up store in Denmark, open for just one day, that didn’t take your money for its products. Instead, Anthon Berg the European chocolatier which operated The Generous Store, asked you to pledge to perform some specific good deed for a friend or loved one in return for which you got some of Berg’s chocolates.
The promotion plays on Anthon Berg’s tagline which is “You Can Never Be Too Generous.”
There were no cash registers in the store. Instead, Anthon Berg clerks wandered the store with iPads. You’d log onto your Facebook account, friend Anthon Berg and pledge to your friend/loved one whatever the required good deed was for the specific item. In the following days and weeks Facebook filled with the photos and accounts of good deeds done by those keeping their pledges.
It’s a lovely idea.
Ben and Jerry’s Scoop Shops do a free cone day every year, so they could certainly adopt something like this.
It would be great to see a cause element added whereby you pledge to do a good deed for a specific charity or cause, although I can understand why Anthon Berg didn’t take that approach. After all, who would post the deed to Facebook?
I can also imagine some kind of pay it forward aspect. You hear about people in drive-up windows paying for the order of the person immediately behind them. Surely the people receiving the good deed could somehow be encouraged to keep the chain of good deeds going.
(By the way, causemarketing.biz now has more than 800 posts, generously donated by yours truly. If you ever feel like offering a token of thanks for this boon of cause marketing information and opinion, I'll be happy to accept it in the form of fine European chocolates).Labels: Anthon Berg, Ben and Jerrys, Facebook, The Generous Store