Social For Good: Benefits for the Company and the Cause

A few weeks back, I was talking to a few co-workers about Facebook Causes and some of the nice campaigns that I’ve seen there. One co-worker specifically focuses on projects in the area of corporate responsibility, and our conversation immediately brought to mind Tyson Foods’ work with Todd Defren, Beth Kanter and others from the Boston social media breakfast community. 

Basically, a challenge was issued with Tyson Foods donating 100 lbs. of food to The Greater Boston Food Bank for every single comment left on their Hunger Relief website. At the end of the challenge, Tyson Foods pledged to provide 70,000 lbs. of food – the equivalent of approximately 54,000 meals – to the food bank.

This was of course promoted through the blogosphere, but the twitter promotion, by way of tweets and re-tweets, is what put it over the top in my opinion. That’s how I found it, and once I left a comment, I tweeted the link myself. Thought this was a nice example of online channels making some real change in the offline world in a short time frame. 

P&G recently went social for good with their “digital hack night” which raised money for Tide’s Loads of Hope disaster relief program. There are several accounts of this on the web, some positive and some negative. I’m choosing to be on the positive side of the fence. P&G has some great marketing minds working for them, so I am not surprised that they came up with this exercise. Here are the basics from Jack Neff of Ad Age: 

“Procter & Gamble Co. paired 40 digital media and agency executives with 100 of its North American marketing directors in a contest to sell Tide T-shirts for charity last night as its much-awaited “Digital Hack Night” became a four-hour reality show aired largely in social media.
Among the lessons learned: Fewer than 150 media and marketing people leaning heavily on their social-media friends and followers, resorting to big-name incentives and spending a total of about $4,000 on digital media can sell more than 2,000 T-shirts at $20 a pop for charity and hit the top 10 trending topics on Twitter in the process. 

In all, the four-team effort, which included executives from Google, Facebook, MySpace, Intuit and a host of other digital players, raised about $50,000 directly for the charity Feeding America and another $50,000 in a match from the Tide brand.

But charity wasn’t the night’s only objective. “We really wanted to come up with a learning experience for our marketing directors that would inspire them and expose them [to digital media] in a way they hadn’t learned before,” Lucas Watson, team leader for P&G’s digital business strategy team and organizer of the event, said. The event also aimed to build stronger ties with digital media and agencies, and help recruit marketers to work at P&G, he said.”

The Tyson’s challenge was great because they were able to do several things in a short amount of time: 

• Raise Awareness of an issue: Food Banks need more donations 
• Promote their existing programs and commitment to the issue 
• Engage (though indirectly for some) with people online using social technologies
• Deliver on their promise: Pledging to provide 70,000 lbs. of food – the equivalent of approximately 54,000 meals

Coming from another angle, I think P&G’s event was brilliant for a few reasons. By hosting this event, P&G: 

• Simultaneously promoted the Tide brand and the Tide Loads of Hope program
• Gave Marketing partners an opportunity to come together, interact and flex their social media skills
• Raised money to help families through the Loads of Hope program

AND (this is a big one!)

• Found an interesting way to SHOW (not TELL) their employees how social media can be used to achieve goals aligned with the company and the brand. 

The last bullet is so key because these types of events get people thinking, ideas created and innovative campaigns launched. In addition, it shows that if you think about it, there is a way to do it all in an engaging way – promote your brand, help your cause and involve employees. No matter what, P&G should be given credit for making the first three bullets mesh with the last. 

For those interested, here’s a quick snapshot of the Tide Loads of Hope program: 

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1K-yjsRFW9Y&feature=related]