No Salt No Lime

Some of my favorite professional reading is the free report on emerging consumers trends by Trend Watching.  I find them as accurate a predictor of trends as any agency can possibly be. That said, in my own tiny band of the spectrum, I almost never get to leverage the information I glean from their reports.

It made me feel great to read this

GENERATION G(ENEROSITY). It was big in 2009, and it will be even bigger in 2010. In particular all things EMBEDDED GENEROSITY. It incorporates all giving initiatives that make giving and donating painless, if not automatic (after all, pragmatism is the religion .
On top of that, with collaboration being such an integral part of the zeitgeist, expect lots of innovative corporate giving schemes that involve customers by letting them co-donate and/or co-decide.

So check out these innovative, corporate EMBEDDED GENEROSITY examples that are worth copying or improving on in 2010:

• Australian Baby Teresa manufactures and sells a variety of 100% cotton onesies for babies, and, for each one purchased, donates another to a baby in need somewhere in the world.
• IKEA’s SUNNAN LED desk lamp is powered by solar cells. The product retails for USD 19.99, and for every unit sold in IKEA stores worldwide, another one will be donated to UNICEF to give to children without electricity in refugee camps and villages in remote areas.
• Still going strong, Procter & Gamble and UNICEF have joined forces for the fourth year running, in an effort to raise money for tetanus vaccines. Each time a pack of the Pampers or Fairy brands bearing a “1 Pack = 1 Life-Saving Vaccine” logo is purchased, P&G will donate the cost of one vaccine to UNICEF.
• TOMS Shoes donates a pair of shoes to a child in need for every pair they sell online. As of August 2009, TOMS has given over 150,000 pairs of shoes to children in need. TOMS shoes plans to give 1 million shoes by 2012.
• Sage Hospitality is encouraging consumers to complete 8 hours of volunteer service in exchange for 50% – 100% off published room rates in their 52 hotels. To take advantage of the ‘Give a Day, Get a Night’ scheme, customers must present a letter from the organization they worked for.
• Give a Day, Get a Disney Day aims to celebrate and inspire volunteerism. Disney is working with HandsOn Network to highlight a variety of volunteer opportunities with participating organizations across the United States, Puerto Rico and Canada. Starting in January 2010, those who contribute their time can have it verified by HandsOn and they’ll receive a voucher from Disney for one day admission to a Walt Disney World or Disneyland theme park.

From a corporate standpoint, measuring ROI on these campaigns will be extremely difficult. It’s my hope that they see enough return on investment to continue and expand upon the concept.

I’ve always felt that to cast any meaningful change I need to act on an extremely local level. It would be great if these types of efforts produced enough results that companies would actually compete in this arena. The payoff would be incredible for all. The affected communities, the men and women carrying out the volunteer work, and the companies sponsoring the service.

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 19th, 2009 at 1:21 pm and is filed under advertising. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.