Dakota Media Services
Case Study 1. - It did the job, but...
Comic Relief 1992 Celebrity Cola
The call from Comic Relief was greeted with great excitement. The brief, ‘Create a new fund- raising campaign for 1996, but be warned, there is nothing new in charity giving. We’ve seen it all.’
That didn’t stop Dakota from breaking the mold. The one thing Comic Relief had over every other charity was a wealth of famous supporters from every corner of the entertainment industry. And these would have been used in a ground-breaking project light years ahead of anything. A deal was Cott Industries (No. 1 contract manufacturer and canner of cola) gave a window of production for 25 million cans of cola, to be printed with prize notifications inside winning cans of Celebrity Cola. The celebrities would stump up the prizes (dinner, concert tickets, etc.). We even had distribution talks which led to an offer of an exclusive with a major supermarket.
Comic Relief were blown away (£12m+ for 8 weeks in the run-up to the telethon; who wouldn’t be). We even approached Virgin Cola (remember them) but were rebuffed who stuck to their own plans. Insiders subsequently said Branson would have jumped at the chance had he known.
With the deal ironed out and ready to roll, the charity took the view that easy money was, well, easier, and instead took the single fat cheque from a corporate cola, and the rest is history. The promotional proposal did what it was required to do, raise a lot of money for the charity, but not the way we had planned or hoped for.
Celebrity Cola presaged by six years the exploitation of celebrity stardom with the launch of ‘I’m a Celebrity’ in 2002. It would have been fun…