I’m sure you have all seen the commercials of filthy, oil encrusted birds and animals who are clearly distraught until they are cleaned successfully with Dawn dish soap. It is very interested to see how this product placement is helping raise money in aiding relief efforts with the oil spill. This interactive campaign uses several forms of social media to increase awareness of the effects of the spill on our wildlife and how individuals can do their share in helping by simply purchasing Proctor&Gamble’s Dawn dish soap.
While most people do not have the time to actively travel and volunteer in the relief efforts, anyone can donate- and this is easy to do with Dawn. The company uses social media to encourage readers to buy their soap products and then go online to enter a code and activate your donation. Every bottle of dawn is the equivalent of 1$ towards to the important wildlife conservation efforts of the Marine Mammal Center and the International Bird Rescue Research Center. Click here to see how much money has been raised thus far. You can also access pictures inside the wildlife rescue along with following updates through their Facebook and Twitter page.
It is also interesting to note that Dawn has been used in cleaning animals due to oil spills for about 32 years now. In a June 17th Washington Post article written by Melissa Bell, Dawn has been helping out for a while now, but it has gone virtually unnoticed until the recent successes of social media. Now Dawn is gaining more popularity through YouTube videos, television and print advertising, and of course the bottle donations through the Dawn website. All of the efforts and campaigns are finally gaining recognition through social networking sites; for instance, Dawn’s twitter feed was activated this past May and by the first week of June, there were more than 1,000 followers.
While Dawn is not an environmental group, they have coupled with various organizations to strengthen their message and through social media it appears to be working fantastically. There is still backlash from other organizations-and there always will be-but there is no way to argue that this is not a great campaign. Something to wonder, is Dawn using this just to promote their products or do they genuinely care about the oil spill relief? How do you feel about Dawn being associated with cleanup efforts?
*I just ran into another blog post written by Jacquie Ottman concerning this issue who provided a different view to Dawn’s campaign, check this out and see how this affects your answer.
I was amazed when I saw these adverts. I had always assumed that complex chemicals were used in the clean up of these poor creatures. To then see them using regular washing up liquid to turn them from slick encrusted animals to their former beauty.
It is great to see corporations answering the call to action to help with this massive clean up task. While I am certain there is more than likely to be marketing benefits from these activities, they are not forced to donate money to these causes.
By: James Carter on 07/11/2010
at 3:22 pm
Props to Dawn for wanting to help the animals that need to be cleaned after the oil spill. I am also surprised that a dish soap would be strong enough to clean off food debris and germs yet gentle enough to use on a bird. I think social media opens so many doors for organizations to spread the word on their campaigns and bring awareness to the other various forms of traditional media they have used to market to their audience. Meeting people where they are in the social networking world can help bring them to you and your organization, and I think this is just what Dawn has done.
By: Renee Doussard on 07/17/2010
at 1:23 am