Whirlpool Corp. will sponsor Reba McEntire’s 24-city tour on behalf of Habitat for Humanity.
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| McEntire and Whirlpool play an encore for Habitat |
This is the second year that Whirlpool’s flagship brand is presenting sponsor of the
Reba Tour, which runs April 15 through July 7.
Whirlpool signed McEntire as its “voice” last year to leverage the appliance maker’s longtime support of Habitat, which builds homes for low-income families. Whirlpool donates a refrigerator and range for each home—a total of $25 million-plus over five years.
“She’s not our brand icon, our corporate spokesperson or our target audience—she’s just our voice,” said John Alexander, Whirlpool’s VP-general manager of the Whirlpool and value brands. McEntire appears in TV and print ads touting Habitat, funded by Whirlpool (and created by its ad agency, Publicis).
This year, marketing behind the tour focuses completely on Habitat, with information tents at concert venues. (Last year’s tour pitched McEntire’s fledgling TV show and a new CD.) Habitat gets $1 for each concert ticket sold.
A contest for Whirlpool employees invites staffers to submit a video telling why they should tour with McEntire; three staffers will win weekend stints joining McEntire on tour.
Last year Whirlpool turned down retailer requests to do their own overlays, donating to Habitat for each Whirlpool product sold. “It was hard to say ‘No thank you,’ but I think it would have destroyed the program,” which was intended as a soft image campaign and not a hard-sell product promotion, Alexander said.
However, a contest for Sears dealers awarded concert tickets and trips to the three dealers with the highest incremental sales in each region. That triggered a 47% sales increase in Sears stores for Whirlpool.
Benton Harbor, MI-based Whirlpool measures results among consumers with a “customer loyalty index”; a 1% increase on the index equals nearly 5% in incremental sales. The 2004 Reba concert tour and ad campaign boosted Whirlpool’s customer loyalty index to 28% from its 15% baseline—a 13 percentage-point hike. The company’s 2004 sales were $13.2 billion, up nearly 9% from 2003.
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