Emily Tan
May 24, 2012

Case Study: Cheil and Minewater use inaction to trigger a donation drive

SEOUL - For a good cause, Minewater and Cheil Worldwide banked on the insight that consumers were willing to donate money, providing they didn't have to make an effort to do so.

wide player in 16:9 format. Used on article page for Campaign.

Background
Korean premium mineral water, Minewater (mi-neh-water), launched a new campaign to help people in Africa suffering from a lack of safe drinking water. But even though 89 per cent of consumers surveyed said they wanted to donate, only 0.9 per cent actually did so. 

Execution
Based on the insight that people are naturally rather lazy, Cheil Worldwide and Minewater decided to make donating easy by introducing the Minewater Barcode drop (Barcodrop) sticker on each of the newly redesigned Minewater water bottles. Each bottle has two barcodes, one, to buy the bottle of water for $1, and an additional water-drop-shaped barcode for donating 10 cents toward water aid for Africa.To donate, customers only had to leave the Barcodrop sticker on and get it scanned at checkout. If the consumer had no wish to donate, they could simply peel the barcode sticker off. 

Results
During the first two weeks of the campaign, from 2 to 15 March, 51 per cent of customers who bought the water participated in the donation scheme (the rest peeled the stickers off) and sales volumes for Minewater increased by 244 per cent. Barcodrop photo sharing became (and still is) a trend on social media. The water is still on sale and distribution has been expanded from the Olive Young chain of stores to Family Mart as well. To date, sales have increased over 1,000 per cent from the date of the new bottle's launch. 
Source:
Campaign Asia

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