UPDATE: This story was updated on Oct. 16, 2013 at 13:49
It was a virtual feast: on Thanksgiving Sunday, detergent brands Cascade and Dawn ran the “Give a Plate” Instagram event, encouraging people to share photos of their plates piled high with food. For every shot, the brands donated $5 to Food Banks Canada.
The Procter & Gamble-owned products asked Canadians share top-down pictures on Instagram using #GiveAPlate and @GiveAPlate. By the end of the day, the program had raised the initial $25,000 donation to $27,165, and more than 400 people had sent in a photo.
The company also offered a surprise – it virtually helped with the cleanup, sending “washed” images of clean plates back to 100 people (after a team Photoshopped out the food).
The initiative built on a common consumer habit of snapping shots of their food. “Sharing pictures of a delicious Thanksgiving dinner is popular with Instagram users,” Corinne Durieu, communications manager at Procter & Gamble Canada, said in a release. “This year, sharing those pictures with #GiveAPlate meant that they also got to share a meal with Canadians that rely on food banks every day.”
This is the first time Food Banks Canada has used Instagram to help raise funds, said Marzena Gersho, director of communications. “They had this great concept, and we really loved the idea. I think the key thing is how to make it as simple as possible for the public to engage, and by making it really easy and fun as well, it really does help engage people.”
Cossette was the creative agency behind the work. Citizen Optimum handled PR.
Note: This story originally reported that a microsite had been created for this campaign. While a domain name was purchased, the site was never created. Marketing regrets the error.
