Black Gold movie follow up & Fairtrade news
I received this email from TransFair about the success of their national Fairtrade Month in October 2006.
Fair Trade Month 2006 was a smashing success, thanks to the invaluable contributions of TransFair USA’s many business partners, stakeholders, supporters, producers, and staff members. After successful Fair Trade Month programs in 2004 and 2005, we knew we could meet our dual goals of increasing consumer awareness of Fair Trade and encouraging business partners to promote their Fair Trade Certified™ (FTC) products, but we were blown away by the explosive popularity of the promotion this year! Here are some of the notable highlights from Fair Trade Month in October 2006.
In Stores
More than 9,700 retail locations participated in Fair Trade Month promotions, and we fulfilled almost 2,000 orders for marketing materials.
Here are some examples of the successful and creative Fair Trade promotions:
• Wild Oats Market saw sales of FTC products increase 42% over the same period last year and had their most successful buy-one-get-one-free promotion ever with FTC Green Mountain Coffee Roasters coffee. The retailer also teamed up with Wholesome Sweeteners to offer a sweepstakes that attracted more than 7,000 entrants. To round out the October promotion each store had two end cap displays, register coupons and grocery bags featuring FTC products.
• Starbucks’ Fair Trade Certified Café Estima blend was the featured coffee of the week for three weeks during Fair Trade Month at all 6000 plus stores nationwide. More than 100 university accounts serving Starbucks coffee posted Fair Trade Month promotional materials.
• Amazon.com held its first online Fair Trade sales promotion with Pura Vida coffee.
Click the link below to read more about the positive directions fairtrade awareness is creating.
• The National Cooperative Grocer Association created co-branded promotional materials for their members and featured an article and advertisements in Cooperative Grocer Magazine.
• PCC Natural Markets discounted products, held sampling events and hosted Santos Marcial Garcia Zambrana from a Nicaraguan Fair Trade coffee cooperative, PRODECOOP.
• Andronico’s created a full page ad in their in-store circular featuring Fair Trade Certified products.
• Giant Eagle created customized POS materials and featured an article about Fair Trade in an October circular and their website.
• Nugget Markets created displays and their own Fair Trade Month promotional materials.
• Wegmans created end-cap displays.
More detailed sales data will be available from SPINS in December, 2006.
Online
Fair Trade Month was a huge online event—thousands of people logged on to the TransFair USA website to learn more about Fair Trade. Here are some highlights:
• 143,512 people visited the TransFair USA website during September and October - twice as many as last year!
• 20,000+ people entered the Discover Fair Trade Sweepstakes to win a trip to Costa Rica.
• 5,720 people visited our online order form for marketing materials from August through October.
• 100+ websites linked to TransFair USA’s site during Fair Trade Month.
Promotions and Advertising
• Over three million impressions and nearly two thousand clicks were generated via Google Image Ads, Blogads, and others.
• Utne and Alternative Medicine ran special Fair Trade advertising sections for manufacturers of fair trade products.
• Over 142 college campuses were blanketed with Fair Trade Month promotional materials.
• Industry Ads - Ads appeared in Natural Food Merchandiser and Cooperative Grocer Magazine. UNFI ran a 14-page FTC section in the October promotion book. Nature’s Best and Tree of Life ran ads highlighting FTC products.
In Communities
TransFair USA sponsored three farmer visits so that community groups and our business partners could learn about Fair Trade directly from the source.
• Cesar Rivas from La Florida coffee cooperative in Peru visited Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. TransFair USA worked closely with Catholic Relief Services to plan Cesar’s tour. Tour highlights included presentations at Villanova, St. Joseph’s, Cabrini College, Media, PA (the first US Fair Trade Town) and Giant Eagle stores.
• Pascual Ataulfo Moreno from CESMACH coffee cooperative in Chiapas, Mexico visited San Francisco, Los Angeles, and San Diego, California and Durango and Denver, Colorado. Wild Oats Long Beach, CA and Wild Oats Glendale, CO hosted Fair Trade events with Pascual, featuring build-your-own Fair Trade sundaes as well as coffee, tea and chocolate samplings. Other highlights included presentations at Balboa High School, Bioneers Conference, Spirit of Christ Church, Fort Lewis College, Santa Clara University, University of San Diego and University of Southern California.
• Santos Marcial Garcia Zambrana from PRODECOOP coffee cooperative in Nicaragua visited Seattle. TransFair USA worked closely with Tony’s Coffee, Pura Vida Coffee, and Starbucks during the tour. Highlights included café presentations with many of Tony’s clients including Caffe Ladro and PCC Natural Markets, a full day of events at Starbucks’ Headquarters, and presentations at universities offering Pura Vida coffee.
TransFair also initiated a Fair Trade Month Mini-Grant Program to enable community groups, retailers and manufacturers around the country to expand their Fair Trade Month activities and promotions.
• TransFair assisted with a promotional tour for the documentary film, Black Gold. Tadesse Meskela, Ethiopian Fair Trade coffee cooperative manager and star of the film, made appearances in NYC, DC, Nashville, Madison, Milwaukee, Chicago and Boston. The tour, initiated by Alterra Coffee Roasters in Milwaukee, garnered the participation and coordination of other industry and NGO partners, including Oxfam America.
• TransFair also assisted with a farmer tour organized by ENGAGE. The tour featured Ubon Yuwa, who has helped establish Fair Trade rice cooperatives in Thailand. Events included a Fair Trade Gala at Samovar Tea Lounge in San Francisco hosted by Anna Lappé, co-author of the book Grub: Ideas for an Urban Organic Kitchen.
• TransFair supported the visit of a Fair Trade farmer from the El Guabo banana cooperative, who joined an African American watermelon farmer and a New England orchard owner for a series of speaking engagements in the Northeast organized by Oké USA.
• TransFair provided a grant for transportation costs for a member of the Cerro Azul cooperative in Ecuador for a series of events with Albert’s Organics in the Boston area.
• 11 other mini-grants were awarded to university students, community coalitions, and coffee roasters in Las Vegas, New Mexico, New Jersey, New York, and Boston.
Elisa Baier
Marketing Manager
TransFair USA
1611 Telegraph Avenue Suite 900
Oakland, CA 94612
tel. 510-663-5260 Ext. 317
fax 510-663-5264
www.FairTradeCertified.org
| Permalink | author bio | 
Comments (2)
You may not like it, but I did a post on my blog about fair trade recently. Your readers might be interested.
Warren
Comment #1 Posted by: Albany Lawyer Warren Redlich | November 25, 2006 08:16 PM
For those of you who are interested in the issue of Fair trade, there is a powerful documentary out called “Black Gold,” that documents the lives of Ethiopian coffee farmers and clearly demonstrates why all of us should be asking for Fair Trade coffee. The film was recently released in the theater but is now available to the public on DVD via California Newsreel. You can read more about the documentary or pick up a copy of it here at http://newsreel.org/
Comment #2 Posted by: Alicia | May 15, 2007 10:17 AM