Staples Makes School Backpack Cause More Engaging than Ever
For the third version of its annual “Give-Back Pack” campaign to provide school supplies for impoverished students, office-stationery retailer Staples has tripled the star power by integrating three teen favorites from music and TV and asking participants to declare their allegiance to their leaders’ packs.
Through September 18, fans can go to www.StaplesGiveBack
Pack.com and choose to join the teams organized under former American idol and country music star Kellie Pickler, pop music star Jason DeRulo or TV star and singer Drake Bell.
Entrants can declare their membership in one of the three packs on the Web site and then collect items for inclusion into a backpack—not necessarily from Staples. Each Staples retail store has set up a collection point that will take those donations. Again this year, the cause marketing campaign is being run in conjunction with online social marketing destination DoSomething.com, which is also operating a Web site giving teens the resources to run school-supply drives in their home towns.
Meanwhile Pickler, DeRulo and Drake have agreed to donate $1 to DoSomething.org for each participant who joins their packs, up to a limit of $5,000. In fact, Drake has already met that level. Visitors can also sign up for a chance to win a trip to spend some time with their pack leader, or failing that one of nine premium packs stuffed with school supplies autographed by the celebrity advocates.
Staples’ in-store shoppers will also be able to add a $1 donation to their total bill at the point of sale.
This year’s Give Back Pack Web site has been made more interactive than previous incarnations, with weekly online polls, Web quizzes to determine which group a visitor fits in most with, video clips of the celebrities, and lists of the school supplies they would choose to pack.
“Back to school is a very important season for us, when we shift from being a year-round destination for small businesses to consumers, moms and teens coming into our stores,” saysDon LeBlanc, senior vice president for retail marketing at Staples. “It’s really key for us to get the word out to that group that we’re a great place to come for back-to-school shopping, and re-engage with these groups who don’t shop us much year-round.”
The Give Back pack campaign, designed this year by Amp Agency, is meant to connect with those young customers at a higher level than simply promoting Staples’ deals, LeBlanc says. “We need to get the word out to teens in vehicles that they want to use. That led us to the DoSomething.org relationship, in order to give teens the power to help other teens at back-to-school time.”
The campaign launched in may with a PSA from Nikki Reed, one of the stars of the “Twilight” movies. And PSAs featuring this year’s three celebrity sponsors are slated to appear as video ads on properties in the Alloy Digital Network, a top-ranked online community for teenagers, as well as airing on Alloy’s high-school-based Channel One Network this fall.
Other innovations for this version of the campaign include the ability for students’ adult friends—teachers, parents, coaches, etc.—to send a text message to donate $5 to the cause. And this year Staples has introduced a line of special “DoSomething” branded supplies: composition books, notebooks, folders and planners with the organization logo.
The retailer is also launching a design contest to find user-generated art good enough to appear on the 2011 “DoSomething” merchandise.
“We’ve had such strong results in the two previous years for this campaign and expect to do so well this year that we’re already making plans for 2011,” LeBlanc says.
