Blog - Wallace and Gromit's Great British Tea Party

by Chris Reed on Partnership Marketing , promotionsandincentives.co.uk 26-Oct-09, 11:11

LONDON - It's been done before but you can't help but smile (slightly cynically) in response to the Wallace and Gromit Great British Tea Party. This time it's in aid of sick children and coming up to Christmas, and with Children in Need around the corner, who better to benefit at Christmas time.

Yorkshire Tea is the ideal brand partner for the event, which runs between 4-11 November this year. The mechanic is a tried and tested one: have a tea party, invite people, everyone contributes and the proceeds are sent to Wallace and Gromit to spend on making sick kids lives more comfortable.

Macmillan Cancer has run these annually and there have been plenty of other brands who have also benefited from tea parties. The interesting angle here is that it’s Wallace and Gromit who are the lead brand and they are using the fact that it’s their 20th anniversary to do this. And it is their children’s foundation that will benefit.

As two of the UK’s most popular characters (Christmas telly just isn’t the same without them) they are in an ideal situation to be able to capture attention, create awareness of their children’s foundation and use their brand trust with mum’s up and down the country to inspire them to hold tea party’s and raise money.

Yorkshire Tea will clearly benefit from branding, direct marketing and vouchers with money off in all the tea party packs but I am sure that they are paying a good contribution to the foundation to be part of this and hopefully some of the marketing budget too.

Easy to be sceptical about a brand’s motives but this brand partnership naturally fits both Wallace and Gromit and Yorkshire Tea’s brand values. If anything it’s a too safe a choice but if it raises money while also benefiting both brands positive values it’s hard to criticise it.

Chris Reed on Partnership Marketing

Comments

Bee Bizub - 26/10/2009

Any chance we'll be seeing this delightful duo here in the states? There's a plethora of top-notch fans here, not to mention Wallace and Gromit word-of-mouth-marketers!