Easter Seals and Safeway Partner in Charitable Promo

When Easter Seals entered a partnership with Safeway Inc. supermarkets to promote fundraising through its "Giving Back Paks" filled with samples of kids' items and coupons, it decided to enter the world of P-O-P with a floorstand shipper."To our knowledge, this is the first sampling initiative that has been done to benefit a charitable cause," says Sharon Watson, senior director of corporate marketing and development for Chicago-based Easter Seals, a non-profit, community-based health and human services organization.The packs contain items from Clorox's Gladware, Kellogg, Mott's, Nestle, Procter & Gamble, Sunsweet and Trolli, and more than $50 worth of coupons.Nearly one million packs were produced. They were shipped to six Safeway divisions in 10,000 corrugated floorstands that hold 90 packs each.The floorstands were designed by Select Marketing Group, Chandler, Ariz., and produced by Meridian Display & Merchandising, St. Paul, Minn. The shipper consists of a header card, a base, trays and support struts. When fully assembled, it measures 21 inches wide, 63 inches high and 16 inches deep including the header card.The trays and shippers were packed at three Easter Seals work centers. "People with disabilities in Sacramento, Calif.; Wichita, Kan.; and Pittsburgh were put to work as a result of this project," Watson says. "We're very proud of this."From the Easter Seals fulfillment center, the shippers were sent to Safeway distribution warehouse centers, where the company then distributed them to their stores in six divisions: the Phoenix division, serving Arizona and New Mexico; the Colorado division, covering Colorado, South Dakota, Nebraska, New Mexico and Wyoming; the Eastern division, serving the District of Columbia, Maryland, and Virginia; the Northern California division, serving California, Hawaii and Nevada; the Oregon division, covering Oregon and Washington state; and the Von's division, serving Safeway's Von's stores in Southern California and Nevada.After the floorstands arrived in Safeway stores, employees assembled them by putting up the base and the support struts, and then placing the five trays already filled with packs and the header card.In all but the Von's division, the promotion was scheduled to run from March 6 through Easter Sunday, April 23. Von's is going to display the shippers during the first three weeks of May.Pleasanton, Calif.-based Safeway "has been a national corporate partner of Easter Seals since 1985," Watson says. "When we thought about this promotion, we went to Safeway and they loved it. This is a test. We hope to take this national in 2001 to grocery outlets throughout the country."Concurrent with the P-O-P promotion is a multimedia ad campaign. "Safeway has done a beautiful full-page print ad that they featured in their March issue of Select magazine, which goes to their frequent shoppers, and they also gave us space in their food day ads throughout the month of March," Watson says."We also took that ad and put it in our annual USA Today insert, which ran on March 25," she explains. "And we mentioned the Giving Back Pak on our annual Easter Seals TV event on Pax TV on March 25 and 26."

Easter Seals and Safeway Partner in Charitable Promo

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