#RollingItForward with Kruger Products

Here’s how we teamed up with Kruger Products, Canada’s leading tissue manufacturer, to thank and support Canada’s frontline hospital workers and treat them as heroes through the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Pandemic Pivot

By March 27, 2020 Canada’s provinces and territories had declared a national State of Emergency and lockdown in response to the COVID-19 global pandemic. This forced Canadians to immediately change the way we live, work, and play, and business had to pivot, along with us. Stock piling of essential consumer products including food, antiseptics, paper towels, bathroom and facial tissue captured headlines due to depleted store shelves – and all eyes were focused on leaders of the consumer-packaged goods space.

Kruger Products, our client of 17 years, leads Canada’s household paper products category with Cashmere and Purex Bathroom Tissue, Scotties facial tissue and SpongeTowels paper towels and is a longstanding contributor to national social good initiatives, including the Breast Cancer cause. A leader and role model in the industry, Kruger Products was eager to step up and make a meaningful difference helping Canadians, and Canada’s frontline hospital workers make it safely through the pandemic.

Roll it Forward Across Canada

Kruger turned on a dime with its trusted agency partners: john street, WaveMaker, T1, and Strategic Objectives to create a multi-faceted #RollingItForward integrated CSR program to thank Canada’s frontline healthcare heroes, support Canadian’s in-need, and make meaningful, branded good news that would inspire fellow citizens, and brands to step up and help.

Objectives:

• Research, vet and engage brand-aligning charitable partnerships
• Pre-empt negative media coverage of paper product shortages; explain how Kruger was meeting the unprecedented demand with its top quality, made in Canada products
• Generate positive branded, traditional, digital, and social media news coverage, including lifestyle, trade, and sports media
• Stimulate consumer awareness, engagement, brand and campaign recall
• Promote Kruger Products’ NHL partnership

Top-Tier Media for Top-Tier Kindness

We made news for the #RollingitForward story by promoting the program’s three distinct pulses: in-person distribution of paper product care packages to frontline healthcare workers across Canada; donations to Food Banks Canada and The Frontline Fund supporting Canada’s healthcare heroes; and a unique, first-of-its-kind social media partnership with seven NHL hockey players – one from each Canadian team – that encouraged Canadians to roll it forward with their own Acts of Neighbourly Kindness.

How We Did It:

• Researched, engaged, and managed charitable partners
• Counselled client on key messages, interview opportunities, social media content, consumer inquiries, campaign positioning and more
• Wrote and shared media materials with a national, regional and locally-based list of mainstream, digital, and social media influencers, trade and marketing publications, in addition to sports and lifestyle journalists
• Secured and facilitated interviews with top-tier Canadian media, including Sportsnet, Breakfast Television, CBC News Vancouver, 680 News, Strategy and many more

We love doing social good, please check out our IABC Best of the Best case study for Cashmere Bathroom Tissue here. Does your brand have a meaningful CSR initiative? Is it making good news? How can we help? Please contact us.