Canadian Retailer - Store 2014 - 50

2014 ERA AWARDS CORPORATE & SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY (LARGE-SIZE RETAILER)
AWARD WINNER

AWARD SPONSOR

HUDSON'S BAY GIVES A HAND TO
CANADIAN ATHLETES

Red Mitten campaign raises awareness of Canadian athletes'
goals, and the funds needed to help them achieve
HUDSON'S BAY Company created the Olympic Red Mitten
campaign as a way for Canadians across the country to raise
funds for Canada's Olympic athletes through the Canadian
Olympic Foundation (COF).
Launched ahead of the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter
Games, Canadians embraced Hudson's Bay Red Mittens as a
symbol of Canadian Olympic pride. The mittens have become
a source of millions of dollars in direct athlete funding.
Now in its fifth edition, the
2013 campaign needed to continue the momentum and keep
raising funds for Canadian athletes prior to the 2014 Olympic
Winter Games in Sochi. The retailer added infant-size red mittens and a new collector's pin in
the shape of the red mitten in order to increase opportunities to
raise money for the COF.
But Hudson's Bay needed
fresh, integrated corporate and
social responsibility tactics that
would resonate with Canadians
and reassert the company's commitment to the COF and Canadian athletes.
A winning approach

The campaign included an exhaustive outreach strategy. Hudson's Bay launched the
campaign at the company's flagship store in
downtown Montreal, featured Red Mittens prominently in Hudson's Bay's official Sochi 2014
Olympic Clothing Launch, deployed a national,
bilingual media relations campaign and amplified the message with a targeted social media
campaign. The national advertising campaign included a fullcolour flyer with a national distribution of 3.5 million copies,
seven e-blast communications
to one million customers, outof-home and radio advertising
in priority markets, and more.
Hudson's Bay went even further in its outreach. It worked
with corporate partners to process bulk orders of mittens,
sent mittens to prominent government officials, media players and celebrities, gave Olympic hopefuls mittens to use in
their own social media outreach, worked with more than
1,200 Petro Canada locations
to sell Red Mittens with $3.33
from each pair sold benefitting
Red Mitten campaign spokesperson
the COF, and more.
Alexandre Bilodeau.

Hudson's Bay created a bilingual corporate and social responsibility program designed to
generate interest, awareness and sales of the fifth edition Red
Mitten. This fully-integrated campaign enjoyed the full support and buy-in from all levels of Hudson's Bay and collaborative efforts from stakeholders and partners. The company also
partnered with the Canadian Olympic Committee to secure
Vancouver 2010 Olympic gold medalist Alexandre Bilodeau as
the campaign spokesperson.
The retailer set ambitious targets for itself, including a goal
to sell more than 700,000 pairs of mittens during the six month
campaign window, raise more than $2 million for Canadian
athletes, secure more than 20 million earned media impressions for launch and capture more than five million social
media impressions on launch day.

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Gold medal results

Hudson's Bay's Red Mitten campaign exceeded objectives. The retailer has sold more
than six million pairs of Red Mittens to Canadians from coast-to-coast-to-coast, raising
more than $25.5 million for Canadian athletes.
Internally, Hudson's Bay reports that the
campaign is a strong example of a company
successfully collaborating with its stakeholders and partners to deliver outstanding philanthropic results. The Hudson's Bay says it will
launch the sixth edition of the Red Mittens in
September 2014.

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Canadian Retailer - Store 2014

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