We created a large branding program called "Glad to Give" with the purpose of connecting the Glad brand to giving and the feeling of happiness it creates. To do all this, the program was designed to perform three actions at different moments in the consumer’s journey through donation. First, we would inspire them to give. It didn’t have to be a substantial – anything lightly used would do fine. Next, we would make the actual donation process easier. Finally, we would reward the consumer and make them feel good about what they did.

By being a part of every moment from inspiration to reflection, Glad became an integral and intrinsic part of the giving process. Suddenly our bags wouldn’t just be known as the expensive ones that don’t break, they’d be known as the ones that mean giving and happiness.

We created Glad to Give.

First we needed an icon. We took our product and with a seemingly simple color change we endowed it with massive symbolic meaning. We created the yellow bag.

It became our symbol of giving, happiness and of Glad. We invited consumers to order one from our Glad to Give website.

We used our website to provide drop off information for almost every charity in America and worked with Donation Town to create a tool that allowed people to schedule free donation pick ups.

Then, we worked with influencers, media, celebrities like Katie Holmes and organizations like the Oakland Raiders to get the word out about our program.

We did all of this, while also instituting our largest-ever product-sampling program. We sent out hundreds of thousands of bags to consumers who may never have used a Glad bag before.

Within a very short period of time we’d given away over 500,000 bags. While you might think that people used those bags for their trash, you’d be wrong. People gave. And gave.

We saw over 120 million impressions and most importantly, an overwhelming positive sentiment. People latched on to the happiness we were championing and got behind the program in incredible ways. From massive amounts of donations, to the good will and good word, we were absolutely amazed and humbled.

On top of the exposure we garnered through partnerships, we received an incredible amount of organic coverage. Programs like the Today Show and Rachael Ray naturally presented our efforts to their audiences and spread the word of our cause. We also drove a sales life, and increased website traffic during our key season, the holidays.

All of this made us very Glad to Give, and we’re only getting started.