The Avon Lady has come a long way from the days of door-to-door pitches for blush and mascara. Now, she's wearing a pink ribbon and touting something with more impact: breast cancer awareness.
Avon Products Inc. [AVP], the 111-year-old company based in Manhattan, has retained its PR approach even as it sought to change its image. The only difference is that its down-home, all-Am erican PR has led to a position as a leading caring company of the '90s.
That positioning, without question, is linked to Avon's Breast Cancer Awareness Crusade. Since 1993, sales of Avon's pink-ribbon crusade products have raised more than $21 million for community-based breast cancer programs throughout the United States. Selling these products, a gilded pink pin in '93-'94; a pen (women used to sign pledges nationwide) in 1995 and earrings in 1996, have been key to the crusade's PR.
"The linchpin of this crusade has always been what we can give back to communities," said Joanne Mazurki, director of global corporate affairs for Avon. "As a business looking toward the future with a vision, we saw this as a way of carving out a unique niche."
It is that quest - the philosophy of being a friend to women nationwide - that has positioned Avon as a leading philanthropic corporation and a paragon in cause-related marketing. And because of that, Avon's PR crusade hasn't been seen as heavy-handed and solicitous; rather, it's been viewed as a grassroots, down-to-earth type of PR.
Avon's PR and marketing efforts have included partnering, through the crusade, with the Federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Alliance of Breast Cancer Organizations, the National Cancer Institute and the YWCA of the U.S.A.; supporting community outreach projects; generating local, not just national, media coverage; providing information online; and hosting nationwide promotions at sites such as area malls.
"In some ways, it's somewhat counter to what the media likes today," said Ellen LaNicca, president of Patrice Tanaka & Co. Inc., the New York PR shop that has worked with Avon on the program since January 1995. "This isn't something that's easily communicated in a sound byte...This is a style of PR that's about 450,000 Avon representatives who are educating women about breast cancer. But in other ways, it has attracted journalists who are looking for substantive news."
The crusade runs about $500,000 a year - including agency fees, special programs, out-of-pocket expenses, and internal Avon costs.
But for Avon, its PR army has been its local representatives, the women who go into their neighbors' homes to tell them about the crusade and about what Avon is doing - but who primarily go to educate them about this disease.
Ironically, it's these women, who aren't professional PR practitioners, who have added a very believable PR spin to the crusade because - as LaNicca and Mazurki are known to espouse - they are "every woman." That every-woman PR approach is one that's been with Avon ever since the company entered women's homes with the "ding-dong-Avon-calling" catchall.
"This crusade is about relationship building and a long-term commitment to women," Mazurki said. "We didn't start this because we were after a bump in sales, and that very human PR view has legs and arms throughout this company and, therefore, makes our crusade pitches very straightforward and easy."
Nonetheless, it's those pitches that have certainly contributed to the crusade's success. According to Avon literature, the program's accomplishments include:
- A $1 million award in October 1996 to 10 people whose leadership of an organization made an outstanding contribution to breast cancer education;
- The commission of a pioneering survey in the fall of 1996 to examine factors that influence women's decisions about breast cancer early detection screening;
- More than 700 million impressions through print and broadcast media;
- The distribution of more than 60 million educational brochures in door-to-door efforts;
- An award of $9 million to the YWCA of the U.S.A.'s ENCOREplus program, which provides education, early detection and post-diagnosis services for breast and cervical cancer; and
- Avon co-sponsoring in April 1996 a national teleconference on community outreach, "Building Partnerships for Breast Health Outreach," during which educators, community and health professionals and others gathered at 600 viewing sites across the country;
But Mazuri noted that it's not only these widespread efforts that point to the crusade's success. For her, the proof has come in other ways, some of them far more subtle and far more personal.
"I remember going to a breast cancer survivors group meeting in Bangor, Maine, after Avon announced it was going to head this crusade and an 83-year-old woman saying to me: 'Sweetheart, I don't mean to be rude, but where have you [Avon and other corporations] been? We have been waiting for this for years.'"
It's that human element that truly tells Avon's tale. At first glance, the crusade can seem as if it's a project headed by a deep-pocketed, monolith corporation which couldn't fail by selecting a national health issue to link to its corporate image. But then you realize that the PR surrounding the crusade has been successful because of far more earthier - and passionate - reasons.
"It's not hard to keep the fire going with this campaign because, unfortunately, I've been touched personally by breast cancer," said LaNicca. "My girlfriend died last September and my mother had a mastectomy and I can't help but be reminded of it. This is a story about PR that's not sexy and outlandish, but relies on very nitty-gritty work and a very serious subject." (Avon, Joanne Mazurki, 212/282-5521; PT&Co., Ellen LaNicca, 212/229-0500)