2008 Finalists | Large Company category

Häagen-Dazs® Loves Honey Bees

Alarmingly, more than 25 percent of the honey bee population in the United States has vanished over the past two winters. Researchers are calling the mysterious bee disappearance Colony Collapse Disorder.  Because the Häagen-Dazs® brand uses only all-natural ingredients in its recipes, honey bees are the little champions behind more than 40 percent of all our ice cream flavors.

To generate awareness and educate Americans about this dire situation and what can be done to help, the Häagen-Dazs brand launched the Häagen-Dazs loves Honey Bees™ campaign and tagged each pint of honey bee-affected flavors with the HDlovesHB™ icon. In addition, a new flavor — Vanilla Honey Bee — launched in February 2008.  A portion of the proceeds from the sale of these bee-dependent flavors will fund sustainable pollination and CCD research at Pennsylvania State University and UC Davis for a total donation of $250,000.  To learn more, please visit www.helpthehoneybees.com.

CaféPress

CafePress allows anyone to reward their self-expression by finding or making merchandise that speaks to their interests and passions.  In conjunction with our Election campaign, in 2008 we launched the CafePress Meter.  The Meter is an indicator of the political climate and trends around the 2008 election, as voiced (and worn) by our 6 million users.

From the Obama groundswell to Spitzer’s demise and beyond, today’s headlines are barely read before thousands of designs are added to the CafePress Marketplace of 150 million+ products.  (15 or so will be added by users while you read this.)  As the leader in User-Generated Commerce, CafePress shows that the voice of the people is loud as ever - even when expressed via the unlikely canvas of a thong.

Visa

Visa's 2007 Retail Branch Program, Surprise, Surprise! , was created to drive credit, debit, small business and prepaid card acquisitions through our issuers' increasingly-important retail channel.  Program innovations included:

• an online training tool for front-line employees to quickly deepen Visa product knowledge
• instant-win incentives for both employees and customers to increase engagement and excitement
• customer-tested creative that broke through the cluttered retail environment, and
• a metrics tool that enabled branch managers to track real-time performance and make adjustments in time to improve program performance. 

Throughout 2007,Surprise, Surprise! appeared in more than 19,300 U.S. retail outlets, created nearly 4 billion brand impressions, and generated several hundred million in incremental product volume.  Among the keys to its success were Visa's research and identification of retail branch "best practices" which served as the program's foundation, extensive issuer and customer input throughout the development process, and an unprecedented issuer awareness and sell-in effort across the Visa organization.