Skip to main content

Cause Marketing Follow-Up on General Mills' Win One Give One Promotion

General Mills is back with it’s Win One Give One promotion, “with,” as I wrote about the promotion back on May 18, 2011, “the item in question being a XO laptop computer.”

This post is part of an occasional series whereby I take a second look at notable cause marketing promotions. Here’s what I wrote back then:
“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!”

For 2012, General Mills has simplified the promotion and the website. This time the diorama is of a village in Rwanda and the featured child is a boy named ‘Jean-Luc.’ Instead of all the complications with the game, the promotion is more straightforward: for every 100 UPCs from specially-marked packages of fruit snack and redeemed online, General Mills will donate one XO laptop to Africa.

As before, when you enter the code, you also enter to win your own XO laptop

There’s still a game you can play with your mouse; shooting soccer balls past Jean-Luc, who is portrayed as the keeper. It’s not as fun as the ‘heroes’ game from last year. But the whole idea of heroes parachuting in to save the kids of Grahamstown had the thin veneer of ‘bwana’ saving the locals; it was rather patronizing.

General Mills has also added a social media component… Facebook and Twitter… that I don’t remember last year.

Given that General Mills is on its second year, it would be great to get a little follow-up about how the laptops are helping the kids in South Africa and how many were actually donated.

Too few companies, even sophisticated cause marketers like General Mills do as much follow up as they should.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Batting Your Eyelashes at Prescription Drug Cause Marketing

I’m a little chary about making sweeping pronouncements, but I believe I've just seen the first cause marketing promotion in the U.S. involving a prescription drug. The drug is from Allergan and it’s called Latisse , “the first and only FDA-approved prescription treatment for inadequate or not enough eyelashes.” The medical name for this condition is hypotrichosis. Latisse is lifestyle drug the way Viagra or Propecia are. That is, no one’s going to die (except, perhaps, of embarrassment) if their erectile dysfunction or male pattern baldness or thin eyelashes go untreated. Which means the positioning for a product like Latisse is a little tricky. Allergan could have gone with the sexy route as with Viagra or Cialis and showed lovely women batting their new longer, thicker, darker eyelashes. But I’ll bet that approach didn’t test well with women. (I’m reminded of a joke about the Cialis ads from a comedian whose name I can’t recall. He said, “Hey if my erection lasts longer than ...
4 comments
Read more

Cause Marketing: The All Packaging Edition

One way to activate a cause marketing campaign when the sponsor sells a physical product is on the packaging. I started my career in cause marketing on the charity side and I can tell you that back in the day we were thrilled to get a logo on pack of a consumer packaged good (CPG) or even just a mention. Since then, there’s been a welcome evolution of what sponsors are willing and able to do with their packaging in order to activate their cause sponsorships. That said, even today some sponsors don’t seem to have gotten the memo that when it comes to explaining your cause campaign, more really is more, even on something as small as a can or bottle. The savviest sponsors realize that their only guaranteed means of reaching actual customers with a cause marketing message is by putting it on packaging. And the reach and frequency of the media on packaging for certain high-volume CPG items is almost certainly greater than radio, print or outdoor advertising, and, in many cases, TV. More to ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Chili’s and St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital

I was in Chili’s today and I ordered their “Triple-Dipper,” a three appetizer combo. While I waited for the food, I noticed another kind of combo. Chili’s is doing a full-featured cause-related marketing campaign for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. There was a four-sided laminated table tent outlining the campaign on the table. When the waitress brought the drinks she slapped down Chili’s trademark square paper beverage coasters and on them was a call to action for an element of the campaign called ‘Create-A-Pepper,’ a kind of paper icon campaign. The wait staff was all attired in black shirts co-branded with Chili’s and St. Jude. The Create-A-Pepper paper icon could be found in a stack behind the hostess area. The Peppers are outlines of Chili’s iconic logo meant to be colored. I paid $1 for mine, but they would have taken $5, $10, or more. The crayons, too, were co-branded with the ‘Create-A-Pepper’ and St. Jude’s logos. There’s also creatapepper.com, a microsite, but again wi...
11 comments
Read more