Aldo Group

"Aldo fights AIDS"

Since 1984, the Aldo Group has been actively involved in the fight against AIDS, raising over $10 million for international AIDS programs. In 2014, Aldo was looking to launch a new Aldo Fights Aids (AFA) campaign to reignite the brand's passion for the cause.

To do this, the brand created four friendship bracelets designed in collaboration with jewelry designer WarisAhluwalia, with 100% of net proceeds donated to Partners In Health. As a Hollywood actor-turned-jewelry designer, Waris was the perfect personality to bring star power to the new Aldo accessories line. To take the campaign online, the brand introduced the hashtag #FRIENDSFIGHT.

To launch the campaign, Narrative was tasked with educating Canadians about the cause, urging them to join the fight against AIDS and positioning Aldo is an engaged corporate citizen. With a limited budget of $20,000, the agency needed to drive both awareness and sales via traditional and social media relations.

To breath new life into a 30-year-old fundraising and charitable initiative, the agency needed to ensure the new jewelry line was positioned as an innovative collaboration that resulted in a fashion forward product with a strong social benefit.

It focused on the central message and core idea of the campaign, "Friends Fight," which spoke to the notion of friends joining together to fight for a cause. To convince people that the bracelets were a coveted must-have item for spring, the agency worked with multiple spokespeople and secured a range of exclusive interviews, both long and short lead, targeting lifestyle and fashion media. The agency followed up with a national, mainstream pitch to all media, a strategic influencer-gifting program, product placement, and a call-to-action on social media.

The program began with an exclusive for the first spokesperson, Waris. The full-page interview, campaign announcement and bracelet feature ran in Flare magazine's February issue, hitting shelves mid-January to preempt the global campaign launch on Feb 1. For the second spokesperson, Aldo creative director Douglas Bensadoun, the agency arranged an interview with Elle magazine.

On launch day, Narrative arranged a feature in Amy Verner's column in The Globe and Mail Style section, as well as coverage in major magazine, newspaper, and digital outlets across Canada, from National Post to Fashion magazine.

The agency also executed a media and influencer gifting strategy. The week before bracelets were available to the public, it gifted over 100 Canadian notables and armed them with messaging to share the #FRIENDSFIGHT hashtag on their social platforms.

The Aldo Fights Aids campaign garnered more than 29 million media impressions from 28 stories over a two-month period and resulted in an overall MRP Quality score of 99 per cent. The influencer gifting resulted in 10 million social media impressions. The first week of launch, the AFA bracelets went on sale on February 1 and sold out two days later - surpassing expectations to sell out within 30 days.