Stuart Elliott
It has been many years since pupils and parents heard the clothing-store jingle that used to signal the beginning of the end of summer vacation: ?School bells ring and children sing, ?It?s back to Robert Hall again.? ? Today, the resumption of classes is foreshadowed by campaigns for office-supply chains, seeking to sell notebooks, pens, staplers, crayons and other back-to-school merchandise.
One of those chains, Staples, has added to its product pitches? most notably its annual one-cent deals ? a cause-marketing campaign meant to help the millions of American schoolchildren who live in poverty. The campaign, now under way, encourages better-off students to donate 11 ?most-needed? school supplies that include index cards, No 2 pencils, notebooks and loose-leaf paper.
For the campaign, called Do Something 101, Staples is teaming up with Do Something, a national nonprofit organisation aimed at cultivating community service among teenagers. Its web site promotes itself as ?using the power of online to get teens to do good stuff offline.?
This is the second year that Do Something and Staples have joined forces for Do Something 101 and the first year that Staples is supporting the campaign with an initiative centered in the social media. The social media effort is being created by Mr. Youth, a social marketing agency in New York. Staples is devoting more than $500,000 to the campaign between its charitable contribution to Do Something and its work with Mr. Youth; there will be additional spending to promote the campaign.
It is emblematic of efforts by marketers to woo consumers by demonstrating they have altruistic interests along with their short-term business needs. ?We have millions of kids coming into the stores,? says Don LeBlanc, senior vice-president for retail marketing at Staples in Framingham, Massachusetts.