As we know, Americans love big. They also love unusual. And how many studies must we cite to know they, particularly millennials, prefer brands that are socially aware? That was the thinking behind an effort last summer from Kind Snacks, makers of Kind Bars: it dumped 50,000 pounds of sugar in NY City’s Times Square.
The sugar dump highlighted U.S. kids ingest nearly 5 billion pounds of added sugar yearly, enough to cover 1,800 football fields. The 3-story-high display represented the amount of sugar U.S. kids are eating every five minutes, Kind says. It also was an opportunity for Kind to introduce its fruit and nut bars, which naturally are devoid of added sugar.
Unilever’s CMO Keith Weed made headlines with a strategically brilliant pre-release of his February 12 speech where he threatens to remove ads from platforms like Facebook and Google unless they clean up their act. The world’s #2 advertiser is considering pulling its ads if big Internet channels fail to tighten policies on news (and fake news), protect children from unseemly content and build unity rather than divisions in society. We should have seen this coming.
Just days before Weed’s clean-up call, in NY City’s Oculus Center, the gorgeous train station aside the 9/11 site, Unilever and Savers, a global thrift retailer, erected the Stain-Less, Waste-Less Installation (see photo, above). It’s a 28-foot-high pile of repurposed clothes intended to highlight the points about reusing and discarding clothing contained in our infographic (below). The installation was displayed February 6 and 7.
Like the Kind sugar dump, this cause-marketing effort wasn’t devoid of product awareness. Signs at the display note a slew of Unilever deodorant, detergent and body wash brands help fight stains, allowing consumers to use their garments longer or donate them sans stains. Free samples of Degree, Dove and AXE, among other products, were provided to the 250,000+ commuters who pass through the Oculus daily. There also were collection bins for commuters who wanted to donate used clothing during this iteration of the duo’s I Give a Sh!rt effort.
