Henkel Helps Get Kids Fit

The Opportunity
Henkel, a Fortune 500 company with deep core values in community involvement and outreach, exercises its corporate social responsibility through the “Henkel Helps” progam.

With an overarching goal to successfully establish “Henkel Helps” as a powerful corporate sustainability program while leveraging and extending the brand identity of each of the individual Henkel brands supporting the program, Defero was chosen to tackle web development and strategy for e-mail marketing, social media, video production, and online paid media for their 2010 Get Kids Fit initiative.

The Approach
Defero was involved in the strategic planning as well as the implementation of the year-long program. Defero developed a “Henkel Helps” website to serve as a central, evolving hub for the various conversations and executions involved with each phase of the campaign.

Starting with an initial goal to build awareness, Defero established a “Henkel Helps” YouTube channel and filmed “man on the street” guerrilla marketing style videos to learn about the public perception of physical fitness in schools today. Interactive participation was spiked by encouraging schools to submit videos telling Henkel what they would do with $25,000 to improve physical fitness. Ten finalists were showcased and the winning school was chosen by popular vote, increasing traffic to the contest. Voters could submit their choice on the website or via text.  Defero also conducted managed email marketing to make voting announcements.

The Results
In total, over 2,110 videos were submitted, surpassing the previous year’s targets for the user generated content (UGC) component. The sweepstakes resulted in over 240,000 entries, more than 1.3 million page views, an uncommonly low bounce rate of only 10% and over 330,000 site visits. There were over 50,000 votes and 10,000 video views for the finalists. The managed email saw industry high unique open rates of 35% - 40% and the list size grew organically from 500 to 15,000 in four short months.

The 2010 Get Kids Fit program was “Henkel Helps’” most successful year by far in the past seven years that the program has been running. They garnered the most program buy-in from their direct customers (the store) and direct participation from the end users themselves.