Cause Marketing

Now through November 11, 2011 participating IGA stores across the United States are offering $0.05 to the Wounded Warrior Project for each case of certain private label food brands sold. This is an echo of a similar effort from participating IGA stores undertook for the Wounded Warrior Project from Memorial Day last May through Labor Day earlier this month. Only instead of private label foods it was for cases of IGA private label water and the donation amount was $0.10 per case. In turn, that seemed influenced by a campaign Kroger did for breast cancer research in October 2010. IGA is a huge buying and distribution cooperative for 5,000 member stores in 40 countries. The Wounded Warrior Project is a nonprofit charity that raises money and awareness for the nation’s injured service members. I became aware of this effort via a news announcement from the IGA in tiny Wendell, North Carolina, east of Raleigh. I’ve been agitating for private label cause marketing in these pages since Nov...

Faithful Readers: My main computer is in the shop and I’m scrambling a little more than usual. I saw a news item today from the Associated Press that showed that store brands are showing a meaningful and bottom-line important uptick in sales. Key sentence… "Kroger said 27 percent of its sales in its most recent quarter came from its own brands and fueled most of the company’s overall grocery volume growth for the year — a trend it expects to continue." So in honor of my computer I’m going to repost something on cause marketing and private label brands that originally appeared on November 11, 2008. In the declining economy, people in the UK , the US and elsewhere are buying more ‘house brands.’Of course they are, you say. What could make more sense than to get the same-quality or nearly the same quality for a meaningful savings? I don’t have a handy chart to demonstrate, but this is what always happens in bad economic times. When the economy dips, sales of cheaper house bra...