Take Hellman’s Mayonnaise for example. It recently won the Cassies Grand Prix – the Cassies are Canada’s Advertising Effectiveness Awards. Their campaign involved creating community gardens in cities and later promoting local food.
All very worthy – it’s a Good Cause.
And Hellman’s isn’t the first to gain the Cassies approval. Last year the Grand Prix winner was Sun Chips for their promotion of their green production and packaging. And in 2007 it was Dove for the Campaign for Real Beauty.
Now part of all this is guilt reduction by the juries (that’s the last Cassies award I’m ever going to win). They feel better about working in advertising if they can feel we are making the world a better place and so they vote for campaigns like this.
But that isn’t all of it. These campaigns work. That’s the whole point of the Cassies. Hellman’s mayonnaise increased its brand share from 24% to 29% when it advertised this way. Sun Chips and Dove similarly proved their in-market success.
Now we are in a period of marketing when the brand is all and the brand is mostly defined by its values and beliefs rather than its product performance. The fact is there is little to choose between most brands in terms of their performance. So we end up choosing on more intangible things – like whether we feel it is a brand for me because of what it believes in. And what it believes in is demonstrated by what it does e.g. Urban Gardens.
And there’s another factor which I’ve talked about before and that’s positive consumer activism. I drive a hybrid at least partially to encourage the manufacturers to invest in these kind of products. It certainly isn’t to save money on gas. I’d have to drive it for over 8 years to do that. And I stop at Sunoco for gas rather than Esso because at least they’re trying to be more environmentally responsible. So by buying Hellman’s I’m encouraging that attitude – as opposed to Miracle Whip’s punk rock “I will not tone it down”.
But I’m starting to feel manipulated. But the link of Community Gardens to Hellman’s is somewhat tenuous. Yes Hellman’s is ‘Real’ in that it is made from natural ingredients but it isn’t local. And they had a total of only 5 gardens, each with 12 plots that consumers could apply for. They probably spent several times the cost of the plots advertising their largesse in creating them.
You wonder how deep these beliefs and values go. As we know Dove is made by Unilever that also produces Axe – hardly a model of enlightened views of female beauty.
I’ll still go with Hellman’s for now. Like I said about Sunoco, at least they’re trying. And they are putting some money in. But I am starting to look a bit harder at them and other Good Cause advertisers to see how real their commitment is.
