New Bow for CARE Packages

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/07/business/media/new-bow-for-care-packages.html

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THE CARE package, once a familiar symbol of providing relief overseas, is being taken down from the shelf, dusted off and reimagined for a new generation of potential donors.

CARE USA, part of the CARE International federation, is to introduce this month a marketing campaign that brings back the CARE package to represent what the organization does. This time, however, the CARE package is being portrayed as less of a symbol of short-term charity and more of a means of long-term empowerment.

To draw attention to the return of CARE packages for fund-raising purposes, CARE USA and its agency, Brunner, plan an ambient, or experiential, component to the campaign: Representations of CARE boxes will be installed in high-traffic sites around the United States like shopping centers.

The initial packages are to be placed under street lamps at Atlantic Station in Atlanta, to appear as if the light poles are emerging from the boxes. “Your CARE package provides essentials like electricity to developing countries,” the text on flaps of the boxes will explain. “Deliver lasting change at care.org.” The campaign, which is to receive a combination of paid and pro bono media, will also feature traditional elements like print advertisements and outdoor signs. Those, too, will depict outsize objects coming out of CARE packages: crops, to stand for farmland that is “flourishing” with CARE’s assistance; a lectern at which a woman stands, about to speak to a group of men; and even an entire verdant village.

“We invented the CARE package, and we’re going to reclaim it,” said Tolli Love, vice president for fund-raising and marketing at CARE USA, which is based in Atlanta. “We knew one of the needs for CARE was to strengthen our brand.”

“We always feel we need to punch beyond our weight,” Ms. Love said, borrowing a favorite phrase of Helene D. Gayle, president and chief executive at CARE USA, and “leveraging the CARE package, and having it show up in unexpected places,” could be methods to achieve that.

The campaign will seek to explain that a CARE package is “not a Band-Aid” or “a handout,” Ms. Love said, but rather a way for recipients to “develop a self-capacity for help.”

Research among consumers to learn what motivates people “to give to international relief organizations” found that the phrase “CARE package” was still remembered, she added, even if it was sometimes used to mean a box or snacks or treats sent to children at sleep-away camp.

Although “there were a lot of positive equity associations” to the CARE package, Ms. Love said, “we hadn’t been using it at all.” That led to a decision “to go back to our roots,” she added, but in a way that would depict the CARE package as “a symbol of hope” rather than “a box of food.”

“The genesis of the idea was in the concept that the original CARE packages “gave Europeans an opportunity to rebuild their own countries,” Ms. Love said, and were a catalyst for “long-lasting change.”

The first 5,000 CARE food packages arrived in Le Havre, France, on May 11, 1946, after being shipped by a private agency formed to dispense postwar aid called CARE, for the Cooperative for American Remittances to Europe. The name was subsequently changed to Cooperative for American Relief Everywhere and now stands for Cooperative for Assistance and Relief Everywhere.

One ad in the new campaign invokes the CARE heritage. “After World War II, CARE packages filled with food and supplies provided immediate relief to survivors,” the text begins.

“Today, what CARE gives people in need can’t be contained in a box,” it continues. “Your CARE package helps provide struggling families and entire villages the tools and training to improve basic education, prevent the spread of deadly diseases and expand economic opportunities for good.”

All the ads seek to evoke memories of the CARE package with a device that resembles what a shipping clerk would stamp on a package. “CARE PKG CONTENTS,” the headline reads, and underneath there are boxes bearing check marks next to words like “empowerment,” “sustainability,” “livelihood,” “tools,” “skills,” “training” and “support.”

The campaign is indicative of a trend on Madison Avenue as marketers and agencies revive vintage ad characters, slogans and jingles in ways that are intended to appeal to younger consumers while still sparking memories among — and not putting off — older consumers. Examples include Alka-Seltzer, Mentos, Planters and StarKist.

“We wanted to contemporize the brand because it’s been around for a while,” said Rob Schapiro, chief creative officer at Brunner, which is based in Pittsburgh and has an office in Atlanta, and in a manner that would “separate CARE from the crowd of great organizations competing for donations.”

“We hit upon a great, visual solution,” he added, “to show donors the result of their gift and how it can’t be contained in the confines of a box: ‘It’s about economic opportunity, social justice. That’s where your dollars are going.’ ”

To help accomplish that, the ads are being designed to feature the recipients of CARE’s aid “front and center,” Mr. Schapiro said, with a focus on women because “the path out of poverty for a family in a village is the woman.” The ads were photographed by Vincent Dixon in Kenya and Rajasthan, India, he added.

The paid-media budget for the campaign is $500,000. The pro bono placements are to be sought through the PlowShare Group. Mr. Schapiro and Ms. Love said they were already considering ideas for the next phase of the campaign, to debut in May around Mother’s Day, which in 2014 will fall on the 68th anniversary of the arrival of the first CARE packages.