How to Generate Advertising & Brand-building with Small Budgets

This Island Earth

Situation:

• In 1990, "unaided-awareness" scores in three separate syndicated studies showed the Arm & Hammer brand was NOT registering among the top 20 "environmental" brands in America, even though it consistently registered among the top 20 "most admired" brands.
• The CEO set the objective of pushing A&H to the top 5 by 1995
• Meager budgets precluded the use of advertising.

Solution:

• A&H management created more than two dozen major promotional partnerships, combined with dozens of smaller sponsorships and hand-in-hand grassroots work with a broad array of environmental "Influentials."
• One example of the far-reaching communications partnerships was "This Island Earth," a television "special" produced by A&H for The Disney Channel.  A&H worked with dozens of environmental collaborators to produce the one-hour video.  Within the show's broader message, numerous celebrities endorsed Baking Soda as the quintessential environmental product.

Outcome:

• Disney used it as their "signature environmental show" and broadcast it "unscrambled" to 50 million homes on 2 occassions, plus dozens of regular broadcasts - worth millions of dollars media value.
• By the end of 1993, the Arm & Hammer brand consistently scored #1 unaided-awareness studies as America's most environmental brand.
• 20,000 videos were used with retailers to induce retail display support and 50,000 were distributed to consumers at $10 plus S&H.  All videos had a 2-minute intro with A&H CEO talking about A&H environmental commitment.
• Winner of 2 "Day-time Emmy" awards.