CAMDEN, N.J. -- Campbell Soup Co. here is working with retailers around the country to leverage its brand power to help raise money for hunger relief through Food For All.
"As a company, we stand for education and nutrition and for eliminating hunger," Denise Morrison, president of global sales and chief customer officer at Campbell, told SN. "As longtime participants in the Food For All program, we realized we could still offer the checkstand coupon program while leveraging opportunities for collaborative efforts between vendors and key retailers to promote our brands and help fight hunger at the same time."
Promotions Campbell has run in the past 12 months involving Food For All included Chunky soup at Hy-Vee stores in the Midwest last October and Pace Mexican Creations cooking sauces at stores in Albertsons' Dallas-Fort Worth division last spring.
In both instances, Campbell agreed to donate up to 5 cents for each unit purchased, up to $10,000, with the money going to Food For All -- the charity selected by both chains.
Mike Tetmayer, senior vice president of marketing for Hy-Vee, West Des Moines, Iowa, said the Chunky promotion, which ran Oct. 20 to 26, was very successful, "and we believe the philanthropic tie-in [with Food For All] helped boost sales, and was good for our image and that of Campbell."
Hy-Vee is scheduled to run another Chunky soup promotion in January based on the success of the earlier effort, he said, adding that he thinks the promotion may be more successful because of a higher awareness of Food For All right after the holiday season.
Hy-Vee participates in Food For All's checkstand coupon program from late October through the end of the year, he said, "and with the Chunky promotion coming at the beginning of that season last year, consumer awareness of Food For All may have been a little less than it will be next January, when people have been exposed to the checkstand program for several weeks, and might tie the two efforts together more easily."
Campbell tied the Chunky promotion to a National Football League theme, using the slogan, "Tackling Hunger One Community at a Time." The promotion featured print ads and shelf-talkers at the stores.
While some of the 184 Hy-Vee stores featured Chunky on end displays, "each of our stores is autonomous, so it was up to each one whether or not to showcase the item on an end," he explained. Hy-Vee currently operates 190 stores.
At Boise, Idaho-based Albertsons, Dee Mooney, director of charitable contributions and community relations, said the chain has the Food For All checkstand program at seven of its 10 food divisions on a year-round basis, "and we're in conversations for the other three: Dallas-Fort Worth, the Acme division in Philadelphia, and the Florida division," she said.
It was the Dallas-Fort Worth division that participated in the Campbell promotion for Pace last spring. "Campbell approached us because of the Star of Texas Fair and Rodeo that was taking place in our area at that time, and we decided to participate," Mooney recalled.
The division encompasses 231 stores in Texas, Oklahoma, Nebraska and Louisiana, but only the 127 units in Dallas, Fort Worth and Austin participated in the Pace promotion, which ran from March 22 through April 2.
Freestanding inserts and radio spots were supplemented by in-store signs. According to Mooney, 67 of the stores also offered samples of "Wild West burgers," which were cooked with Pace picante sauce; those stores also handed out coupons that contained recipes for the burgers on the back.
Food For All was also the recipient at two Albertsons divisions last June of proceeds from a nationwide food drive, Mooney told SN. While eight divisions directed their proceeds to food banks affiliated with Second Harvest, the other two divisions asked that the funds raised be donated to food banks connected directly with Food For All, she said.
