BRAND AID: HANDS ACROSS A NEW CAMPAIGN : Coupons Give Discounts and Aid U.S. Hungry Too
Last year Hollywood entrepreneur Ken Kragen teamed up with Coca-Cola to sell his Hands Across America concept to the nation.
When the 15-minute hand-holding sing-along had climaxed last May 25, Coke--for its $4-million-plus contribution--had received more than six billion media “impressions,” said Kragen, including Coke-Hands connections stamped on 63 million Safeway shopping bags and 300 million McDonald’s tray place mats.
Now, in a new twist on the marketing of Hands Across America, Kragen’s USA for Africa Foundation is teaming up with CPC International Inc., the manufacturer of Best Foods mayonnaise and Skippy Peanut Butter.
The campaign, unveiled last week, is called “Brands Across America.”
For the privilege of using the Hands connection in its promotion, CPC will make a donation of as much as $100,000 to the foundation for its hunger projects in the U.S.
“It’s called ‘cause-related marketing,’ and to my knowledge, Brands Across America is our first major program,” said Linda McBride, brand promotion planner with the Englewood Cliffs, N.J., company.
A radio campaign, broadcast over several Los Angeles rock stations, promises consumers discount coupons and up to $10 in rebates on several products sold by CPC. Ads began running nationally last week in newspapers serving more than 47 million readers, McBride said. In addition to Best Foods and Skippy’s, the company sells Mazola Corn Oil, Thomas English muffins, Niagara spray starch, Golden Griddle syrup and other products.
A spokesman for Valassis Inserts, an ad distribution company, said that the Brands Across America insert was intended to reach 2.7 million readers of more than a dozen Southland newspapers, including The Times.
The ad line reads: “Send in for your refund and $1 will be donated to Hands Across America in your name.”
McBride said the Brands Across America concept was the brainchild of a consumer promotion agency: “We decided to participate because of the good will generated from Hands Across America and ‘top-of-mind awareness,’ ” said McBride.
“Top-of-mind awareness” is a simple marketing principle, she explained: associate one advertising concept with another. In the case of CPC foods, the equation would read: Hands Across America equals “ending hunger” equals food equals CPC brand products.
“There are two parts to the campaign,” McBride said. “First of all, there are coupons on actual brands. We also have a refund of up to $10. That offer will expire on July 31, 1987.”
Consumers who collect the coupons, proofs-of-purchase and receipts that are necessary to send in for their $10 rebate will receive the added incentive of helping a starving American.
“ Up to a total of $100,000 from CPC will go to Hands Across America. That is very clearly present in the (advertisement) and the coupons. In other words if we get $100,001 in refund redemptions, we will pay $100,000.”
If CPC gets less than $100,000 in redemptions, Hands Across America gets a smaller contribution.
Cause-related marketing is not new.
Craig Smith, editor of the authoritative Corporate Philanthropy Report newsletter, told Calendar that for more than a decade, major companies have been committing larger and larger shares of their ad budgets to nonprofit organizations. The corporations ask only that they be able to associate their products with the organization’s cause.
According to Smith, the best cause-related marketing associates a product with sincerity, honesty and good feeling.
“I trace it back almost 20 years to when the tobacco companies were banned from advertising on television,” he said.
Tobacco products began to sponsor sporting events, contribute to health-related causes and generally attempted to associate with positive life-affirming images, Smith said.
Other companies began to follow suit:
American Express, generally is credited with coining the “cause-related marketing” phrase, connected with last year’s Liberty Weekend festivities by promising to give a donation to restore the Statue of Liberty every time its product or service was used. The company eventually contributed more than $1.7 million.
Morton Thiokol, manufacturer of Fantastik spray cleaner and Spray ‘N Wash, promised to donate 20 cents to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children each time a coupon was redeemed for one of its products. That 1985 campaign raised more than $700,000.
Scott Paper Co. introduced a new line of products last year with the promise that the company would donate 5 cents to charity every time a product was purchased. By purchasing Scott’s Helping Hands paper towels, trash bags, toilet paper and other products, consumers were given an opportunity to raise money for the March of Dimes, Easter Seal Society and four other national charities.
But though the linking of causes and corporations has a relatively long history, it wasn’t until the advent of pop charities--Hands Across America, Live Aid, Farm Aid, etc.--that cause-related marketing began to get wide exposure outside of the marketing industry, Smith said.
Willie Nelson’s Farm Aid associates its logo with Wrangler jeans. Live Aid lent its name to four sponsors--General Motors, Pepsi, Kodak and AT&T.; Irish rock star Bob Geldof’s Sport Aid event, which raised an estimated $32 million for African aid last summer, was sponsored by British Airways.
But the Hands/Coke connection was, by far, the most pervasive and effective use of cause-related marketing in the pop charity field, Smith told Calendar: “I later found that relationship between Hands and Coke (to be) so tight that it’s hard to figure where one begins and the other leaves off.”
Kragen discussed some of his Hands/Coca-Cola marketing triumphs Jan. 22 before the Direct Marketing Club of Southern California, meeting at the Bonaventure Hotel:
“Well over 500 million point-of-sale forms, posters, entry slips were in stores, malls, fountain outlets across the country. In fact, wherever Coke was sold, there was information about Hands Across America. Coca-Cola was very pleased.”
“There were radio public service announcements on over 2,000 radio stations.”
“There were 7,000 McDonald’s that distributed 300 million tray liners.”
“50 million pieces (of advertising) went out from Citibank and Citicorp.”
“American Express mailed 25 million pieces of information to their card members.
“Cort Furniture was very, very helpful, very significant. They gave us furniture for every one of our offices and we had 63 offices across the country,” he said. “Cort offered sign-ups in their stores and got their employees to run employee contests.
“The undertaking was a monumental one and it was one which was done with great, great help from the direct marketing industry,” Kragen said.
Kragen said that he didn’t have that same great help from the media. It took a different sort of marketing strategy, he said.
His research indicated that 38% of the Hands Across America participants wouldn’t sign up until the week before the May 25 event. Even more would simply show up on Hands Across America day.
“To create a belief in its success, we had to do it with a sign-up factor that in the early stages was running well under 40% of the total number of people needed,” Kragen told his audience. “We knew from our research that 60% of the people would show up.
“But you can’t say that to the media. They aren’t going to believe you. So we had to play a little game for the first time in my life. I’m a great believer in never putting anything out that’s not absolutely 100% true in every form. And everything we put out was true, but we finagled every which way we could.”
Before the Hands event, Kragen’s organization fielded more than 1.75 million phone inquiries, he said.
“Calls became sign-ups. Every way we could we interpreted the figures in the best possible light because the media was very, very ready to bury us and essentially kill the whole project sort of in a self-fulfilling prophecy where they would prophesize that not enough people would show up and, as a result, people would not be willing to go out.”
Kragen said that his 350 employees and several thousand volunteers won over media skepticism.
His most disarming technique for handling both the media and the public during Hands Across America is one he has used throughout most of his 30-year career as a promoter and salesman, he told the direct marketing executives: “Honesty is the best gimmick there is.”
