Hollister Co. and nonprofit, Operation Warm Coats for Kids, partnered together in fall/winter 2015 season for a "Buy a Coat, Give a Coat" program with a goal of providing 10,000 brand new, Operation Warm winter coats to children in need across the United States.
The "Buy a Coat, Give a Coat" program was a multi-faceted cause marketing campaign involving both in-store and web promotion. It also included a strong Twitter promotional calendar to meet the overall campaign objective in a short two week window in December of 2015 - one of the busiest shopping periods of the year. The campaign involved cooperation from both Operation Warm and Hollister Co.'s marketing, communications, development and program teams.
For each winter coat sold in Hollister stores and online across the United States from Tuesday, December 1 through Saturday, December 13, a new Operation Warm coat was be donated to a child in need, up to 8,000 coats. In addition to the brand's in-store efforts, Hollister offered opportunities to support the cause on Twitter. For each campaign-related retweet, Operation Warm donated a new coat, up to an additional 2,000, to children in need. Hollister will also involved, pop star Cody Simpson and his band Coast House, to help spread the word through a variety of performances and social media support.
Over the course of the two-week campaign period, Hollister and Operation Warm were able to achieve their objective of helping to fund 10,000 brand new winter coats for children in need through their aggressive implementation strategy – including 8,000 in-store Hollister coat sales and 2,000 Twitter retweets. The Hollister Co. team was also involved in their own coat giving event near their headquarters in Columbus, Ohio where over 400 children received brand new winter coats.
