Elmer's App Assists Moms

Columbus, Ohio — Elmer's Products united its first integrated digital-to-retail campaign around a mobile app and website that helps mothers capture the emotions of their children's first day of school. The campaign, which trademarked the brand as the "Official Sponsor of the 1st Day of School," includes account-specific in-store activity at Walmart and Kmart.Elmer's "1st Day" mobile app enables users to snap photos and add comments or journaling to them. The photos are instantly synced to Elmer's dedicated website (the1stday.com), giving mothers more options. They can tag each child with an individual photo album, edit the photos, create a slideshow with music to share with friends, and batch-download the photos."We found an opportunity that mom is the main chronicler and scrapbooker of the family, and a lot of times photos are taken but not a lot of the emotional aspects of the photos are captured," says Lisa Singer, senior product manager at Elmer's. "We wanted to bring that into our app and provide mom a way to add a journaling or caption feature."The site offers a secure way to house photos and videos, and sharing is one-to-one (from user to user), as opposed to a mass share with Facebook or Instagram. The site does offer an option to share a photo with Facebook.The iPhone and Android app is free and can be downloaded via a QR code found on in-store displays and on Elmer's packaging. "We designed this to be very shopper friendly," says Becky Ziegler, Elmer's account director at SBC Advertising, Columbus. "It's a way to complete the cycle for shopper marketing." SBC, Elmer's agency of record, handled creative for the campaign.Elmer's customized in-store displays to each retailer's specifications. The biggest rollout came at Walmart, which had an exclusive glue stick display that held back-to-school shopping lists. "There are two in every Walmart store, and they are meant to be bookends to the train of off-shelf product in Walmart stores," Singer says. The top of the display touts the "Official Sponsor of the 1st Day of School" logo and a QR code. Kmart stores received an exclusive aisle blade that has the QR code and additional information about the app.Elsewhere, CVS/pharmacy placed corrugated locker displays in its back-to-school section and attached a sticker with the QR code to the display. Elmer's printed product trays for Walgreens stores that displayed both Elmer's and Walgreens artwork but did not have the QR code. Instead, the code ran in Walgreens' in-store coupon book. Select supermarkets, like H-E-B, placed an Elmer's product tray – and some had QR codes, depending on the chain's preference. Additionally, Michaels stores held a retail event at which mothers could download the app while their children made frames to house that first picture."I would say this is probably our first integrated campaign in terms of the tight messaging of Elmer's being the official sponsor of the first day of school – being very consistent throughout the whole campaign at each aspect," says Singer. "In years past, we've had TV commercials and banner ads, as well as email blasts that went out to teachers, but we haven't connected it with the social and mobile aspect that has become more prominent today."Elmer's also added a cause element to the campaign, promising to donate one product to the nonprofit Kids In Need Foundation for every photo uploaded to the "1st Day" site. The campaign was also part of Elmer's outreach to teachers – a monthly email sent out to their in-house teacher database. Print ads in scholastic magazines informed teachers how to use the app to document the school year.Singer says the campaign will be tracked by looking at all of the impressions through TV, mobile, banner ads, partnerships with key websites, QR code scans and engagement with bloggers. The mobile app went live June 26, and displays hit stores in July and were expected to last after Labor Day.New Creature, Rogers, Ark., produced the Walmart displays. Kmart produced the aisle blade in-house. Impact Fulfillment Services Inc., Burlington, N.C., produced the Elmer's-branded displays.

Elmer's App Assists Moms

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