Dole Food Company

DOLE FOOD COMPANY: Peeling Back the Dole Brand

Dole Food is one of America’s most iconic brands, and extreme¬ly active in its corporate social responsibility efforts and initiatives. Despite demonstrable leadership on issues like childhood nutrition and environmental sustainability, a February 2010 media analysis revealed that only three percent of Dole’s media coverage referenced the company’s effort to be a good corporate citizen.

Dole retained GA as its Agency of Record to help position the company as a leader in sustainability and nutrition initiatives. The biggest challenge that GA faced was Dole’s expectation of tangible results in just six months.

GA developed a comprehensive communications campaign featuring Dole’s nutrition and global sustainability initiatives front-and-center in media relations, direct-to-consumer outreach, innovative partnerships and online engagement. Partnerships with groups like Working Mother and Treehugger, the Discovery Channel’s environmental blog, provid¬ed Dole third-party validation with previously skeptical audiences unfamiliar with the company’s CSR effort.

Targeting key consumer influencers and mommy bloggers with appealing news hooks – including interviews with celebrity dieticians and Dole’s own team of nutrition researchers – the GA team swung the pendulum of Dole’s media coverage back in the right direction. As of October 2010, the nutrition and sustainability campaign has received more than 36.7 million media impressions, or 46 percent of the company’s current total coverage.

RESULTS

• Campaign Length: >6 mos.

• Total Media Impressions: 36.7M

• Consumer Blog Impressions: 10.5M

• Business: 2.2M

• Sustainability: 16.3M

• Financial: 2.7M

• Other: 15.5M