Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market Promotion Benefits America's Wounded Warriors

Promotional Merchandising - For A Good Cause

Tesco's Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market is teaming up this week with global consumer packaged goods giant Unilever, in a promotion to support Operation Homefront, a non-profit organization that provides financial and other forms of assistance to U.S. military troops, their families at home, and to America's wounded warriors returning home from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

From Wednesday, May 12 -to- May 18, the fresh food and grocery chain will donate 25 cents to Operation Homefront, up to a total of $15,000, for each of the Unilever-owned and marketed food, grocery and non-foods branded items advertised in this weeks Fresh 7 Easy advertising flyer.

Unilever brands featured in the promotion include the following consumables: Country Crock and I Can't Belief It's Not Butter (margarine); Best Foods (mayonnaise); Wish Bone (salad dressing); Skippy (peanut butter); Ragu (pasta sauce); Lipton (tea and soup mix); Breyers (ice cream); and Knorr (bullion and pasta side dishes).

Additionally, Unilever's Dove brand Men's Body Wash and Body Bars, and its Suave brand Body Wash are included among the advertised items in the promotion, which is headlined: "Bring Home Any of these U.S. Favorites and We'll Donate 25 cents to Operation Homefront."

The Unilever-owned brands all are among the top selling in the U.S. in their respective categories. Unilever, which has 163,000 employees worldwide and sells its brands in 170 countries, is headquartered in the Netherlands. The U.S. is its number one market in terms of annual gross sales volume.

Like Unilever, Fresh & Easy parent Tesco, which is headquartered in the United Kingdom, is a global company. Tesco has about 400,000 employees worldwide. It's Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market USA chain is based in El Segundo, (Southern) California.

It's good to see two global giants - one, Unilever, a top-three global consumer packaged goods company, and the other, Tesco, the fourth-largest retailer in the world - donating money out of a promotion to a great organization like Operation Homefront, which serves as a lifeline for U.S. troops and their families.

Operation Homefront has been particularly vital over the last nine years, during which America's all-volunteer fighting force has been engaged on two war fronts - Afghanistan and Iraq. So many wounded warriors have returned home from these two wars. The organization has been key in easing their transition, in advocating for them, and in helping their families cope.

We can say from experience that the $15,000 donated by Tesco's Fresh & Easy to Operation Homefront will be put to immediate, practical use by the organization to aid U.S. soldiers and their families.

[In fact, we suggest Tesco plc and Unilever both consider matching the $15,000 Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market maximum donation to Operation Homefront. We suggest this because the organization needs as much assistance as it can receive. The $45,000 could be put to good use right away. Readers, if you would like to help Operation Homefront, it's currently in immediate need of various forms of assistance, which you can learn about by going to its website here.]

One of Operation Homefront's four current corporate sponsors is Walmart Stores, Inc. Others are: Outback Steakhouse, Jim Beam, and technology company BAE Systems. We suspect the group would welcome additional corporate sponsors.

Supplier-retailer leveraged promotions

Fresh & Easy Buzz is a big fan of what we term "supplier-retailer leveraged promotions," and we've suggested for some time it's something Tesco's Fresh & Easy needs to do semi-frequently on its manufacturer branded (as opposed to private brand) side of the business.

As an example of the power of such promotions, in which the supplier funds a part of the promotion - in the current Fresh & Easy promotion this week it being the 25 cent per item purchased donation to a great non-profit group - read this April 2009 piece [Competitor News: Safeway Leverages Supplier Promo Monies to Fund 'Living Well Feeling Great' $10 Store Coupon On $30 Purchase Promotional Program] from the blog.

Cause-focused promotions like this one are great, as they allow the retailer - and shoppers - to step outside of themselves and give to a good cause while at the same time getting useful products at sale prices. Win-win comes to mind.

A solid A grade

We award solid grade of A to Tesco's Fresh & Easy and Unilever for the "Bring Home U.S. Favorites" promotion to benefit Operation Homefront, which starts tomorrow.

Click here to view the promotion in Fresh & Easy's advertising flyer, which is effective starts tomoor, may 12 and ends on May 18.

Fresh & Easy Buzz Linkage:

[Click here to view a selection of past Fresh & Easy Buzz stories and posts about promotional merchandising by Tesco's Fresh & Easy and other grocers.]