Dive Brief:
- Dollar General Corporation and Kellogg Company partnered for “Here’s My Story,” a campaign that shares customers’ personalized literacy and education advancements stories as part of National Literacy Month in September, per a joint press release.
- With the effort, exclusive packages of Kellogg’s cereals and Cheez-It crackers will have heartwarming stories that show the positive impact of literacy effort on adult and youth learners and will be available at more than 14,000 Dollar General locations through October.
- The campaign will also use the #DGMyStoryEntry hashtag to encourage social media sharing of people’s own literacy success stories. Kellogg’s and the Dollar General Literacy Foundation will randomly select 50 social posts using the hashtag to receive a complimentary $50 Dollar General gift card in early November.
Dive Insight:
The big takeaway from the campaign is how digital's influence on shopping marketing continues to spread, impacting cause marketing efforts and dollar stores. For both CPG brands and retailers, their efforts need to have social activations if they are to impact consumers where they are spending much of their time — on social media sites.
Another key trend the campaign ties into is the use of storytelling as a way to engage with consumers via authentic content.
Kellogg’s, along with Hershey’s, were cited this March by Engagement Lab as two brands topping the company’s first TotalSocial rankings in social media engagement and word-of-mouth conversations. Similar to the “Here’s My Story” campaign, the report touted Kellogg’s success with its offline presence generating buzz with activations like its NYC cereal café. Custom packaging celebrating National Literacy Month along with the social media hashtag for online engagement falls into a strategy of creating brand awareness via in-store activations.
Dollar General has a history of teaming up with consumer brands, such as a partnership with Coca-Cola that combined a mobile app along with an in-store experience powered by beacons that send push notifications around Coke offers, custom content and promotions to mobile users.
