Watch Share Create A Wave For Change

The third annual Neutrogena “Wave for Change Campaign” is now live. Brand ambassadors Emma Roberts, Hayden Panettiere, Miranda Cosgrove and Sandra Echeverria are also on board encouraging teens to help build brighter futures for children across the country. According to the campaign:

In the United States, millions of students are missing the opportunities and tools they need to help them realize their dreams and reach their full potential. Now YOU have the power to help change that. From now until August 31st, every time someone watches the video above, Neutrogena® Wave for Change® program will donate $1 to GlobalGiving to support educational charities within the United States — helping us towards our goal of $250,000. We’ll kick off thecause by donating $100,000, but it’s up to you to raise the rest. So watch the video, spread theword and watch change become reality.

The three nonprofit partners this year are KIPP, Education Through Music and Para Los Ninos. Neutrogena is also offering the opportunity to “tip off” the campaign buy clicking on which of their products you’ve purchased since July 1st. It looks like this:What I like about this campaign is, first of all, that it’s a multi-year effort. It’s hard to know if in the first year Neutrogena committed to doing the campaign over multiple years, maybe it was so successful the first year that they decided then to do it again when they went into annual planning with their agencies. But it’s very clear that they are making a commitment to this campaign and that is a huge step on their part and towards creating a culture of corporate social responsibility within Neutrogena. For anyone who works with brands, you know that brand managers change frequently and sometimes that means priorities change too. I also love their tab. It’s hosted on their own website, so they can capture all of the traffic and analytics. They completely own the content and can archive and have it always versus hosting this on another social media platform. The page has everything you could want, a media-rich video at the top, an explanation of thecampaign (including appropriate asterisks for us in the cause space who know there is always more to say that you can say in a sound bite). They have information on this year’s nonprofit partners, previous years partners, a video on what happened after fundraising last year, information on products and an opportunity to click through and purchase those products. They also have a listing of where their products are sold, a nod to their retail partners.

The education tie-in is well done. It fits with who they are and their demographic – students. They are definitely targeting girls and the page has the pink and tone to fit what I would see a teenage girl being attracted to. Education is a really important cause to me as well, one that I’ve talked about many times before.

One thing missing to me is that they have celebrity ambassadors, I would have included the celebrities on the page. A small section with quotes on why they’re involved. Also you can “like” the page that links to Facebook but there isn’t any sharing option for Twitter. I just looked and they don’t seem to have a robust Twitter profile, so obviously they are not spending money on that channel but they still could have a dedicated hashtag like #WaveForChange and allow people to share on their own Twitter pages.

Overall, a great campaign and I’m excited to share with my network and help them reach their goal.