The Glad to Give campaign was inspired by the insight that people around the country were already using Glad products to give. The brand wanted to lend a hand in an even bigger way while demonstrating the strength of its bags that can hold 20lbs+ of clothing, home and toy donations.
On #GivingTuesday, a global day dedicated to giving back, the Glad Products Company launched its #GladtoGive campaign in partnership with Katie Holmes to inspire people to give back to those in need.
During the season of giving and a critical sales period for the brand, the team set out to generate awareness and engagement for Glad to Give, while driving preference and affinity for the Glad brand.
Glad to Give inspires and enables giving opportunities through marketing efforts, cash donations to charities, and with free special yellow Glad ForceFlex bags and pickups to local charities of your choice, made possible through a partnership with Donation Town, available all on GladtoGive.com.
With a giving conversation spike online in December and most charitable giving occurring the last three months of the year*, the team set out to communicate that Glad is the brand for giving by owning the #GivingTuesday conversation.
We enlisted the help of actress and noted philanthropist Katie Holmes to put a nationwide call out for people to give gently-used items a second life and help bring warmth and joy to others with #GladtoGive. Katie Holmes collected donations in Glad's iconic yellow trash bags and educated people on the campaign across her social channels, as well as on national media outlets including the Today Show, Rachael Ray, Extra, InStyle, People, Us Weekly and Popsugar, which were also amplified on social.
And to enthuse more donations, people were encouraged to enter a sweepstakes by sharing what they were #GladtoGive on Twitter or Instagram for the chance to win Glad bags full of personal items donated by Holmes and other celebrities.
Additionally, we hosted a #GladtoGive Twitter Party where we asked participants what they were #GladtoGive on #GivingTuesday. The party garnered record engagement with more than 2,155 tweets, 351 participants and 5.4MM+ impressions.
Glad also worked with Twitter to conduct a test and learn to command a significant share of voice for the brand with #GivingTuesday and #GladtoGive.
Throughout the month of December, we partnered with highly-influential content creators to host Glad to Give holiday parties that encouraged guests to bring a coat to be collected in yellow bags and donated to charity partner One Warm Coat. As a thank you parting gift, influencers gave guests GladWare containers to decorate and fill with leftovers to encourage nothing going to waste. Original content from these Influencers helped inspire additional consumer-generated content, with people engaging through shares, comments and posts of what they were donating, bringing together an online community through social good, that was translated offline.
During the peak of the holiday season, we asked people to share a photo of their holiday meals on social with #GladtoGive to trigger a donation from Glad to charity partner Free The Children, each of which provided a holiday meal to someone in need.
* 2014 Network for Good Digital Giving Index, 2014; The Online Giving Study
As a result of these efforts, we secured:
Not only did we meet the objective of generating awareness and engagement for Glad to Give, we also drove a sales lift and increased website traffic during the brand's key sales period.
Glad to Give works because the Glad brand positioned itself as the tool and resource that inspires, supports and enables giving because of the quality of its products, as well as the brand DNA.
