Women can get a little something extra with their calcium supplements starting this week.
Viactiv is launching a program for its Calcium Soft Chews that combines cause marketing with a continuity reward program. The effort, called Send a Seal, Change a Life, starts with a straightforward cause promotion: Women mail in the freshness seals from Viactiv boxes to trigger a donation to Dress for Success, a non-profit that provides career wear for low-income women who are job-hunting. (Each woman gets a suit when she has a job interview, and a week’s worth of separates when she gets the job.) Viactiv will donate 50 cents for each seal redeemed, up to $100,000.
Here’s where the program breaks new ground: Women who redeem seals can register to earn rewards for themselves. Women register at Viactiv.com to bank points for each seal they send in, then redeem the points for items like a lipstick case, leather handbag and spa robe. Participants get different point values for seals from 10-, 60-, 90- and 120-count packages. The program breaks March 8 and runs through yearend via Zipatoni, St. Louis. A March 12 FSI, sampling, retail displays and a 10-second TV spot support the program launch.
“We needed a way to help women remember to take their chews; this gives them an additional incentive to take Viactiv every day,” said Poorvi Patodia, associate marketing manager for McNeil Nutritionals. “Our consumers are women who are proactive about their communities, and love to pamper themselves. We want to appeal to both sides.”
The site’s reward system has four “shops” with three to four items each, suited to career, fitness, spa and style: spa robes and slippers, a leather handbag, a satin jewelry clutch and a lipstick case that can also hold a few Viactiv chews. (Viactiv initially offered the lipstick case as an on-pack premium a few years ago; it proved so popular with consumers and retail partners that it’s in the reward program.)
There are three tiers of rewards, at 300, 500 and 900 points. Members earn 100 points for the seal from a 60-count package (and 200 points for a 120-count club pack), so members can collect enough seals within the year to earn even top-tier rewards, Patodia said.
Send a Seal, Change a Life follows an online-only offer for a commemorative Olympics lapel pin with purchase. Response has been okay, but not impressive, Patodia said. It’s the first online-only offer that Fort Washington, PA-based McNeil has made since it bought Viactiv from Mead Johnson in 2001. “You can’t just replace traditional ad vehicles with an online-only campaign,” she said.
Viactiv’s calcium chew sales in food, drug and mass-merchandise stores fell 7% to $28.8 million for 52 weeks ended Feb. 19, per Information Resources, Inc. It holds a 2.4% share of the $1.2 billion mineral-supplement segment. At the same time, Viactiv’s multi-vitamin sales zoomed to $7.6 million, verging on a 1% share of the $762 million multi-vitamin business, per IRI.
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