Bounty® is a brand that is serious about cleanliness and committed to giving back. The challenge was creating awareness about these important brand philosophies in a manner that would engage and support communities across the country. The solution was the Back-to-School Make a Clean Difference campaign, which was devised to help America’s youth unlock curiosity and creativity by providing a clean and fun learning environment.Supported by research that confirmed there’s a link between the cleanliness of school facilities and students’ academic achievements, the Make a Clean Difference campaign was launched in Spring 2010. Its goal was to engage parents, teachers and communities in an effort to transform the learning environments of our nation’s schools.

At the heart of the campaign was a nationwide Back-to-School Facebook contest that provided the winning school with a $25,000 art classroom makeover designed by a celebrity design team. The grand-prize winner and runner-ups also received a visit from the Make-a-Messterpiece bus, an experiential art studio on wheels, which demonstrated to students that inspiration and creativity can be found inside and outside the classroom.

In total, the campaign has benefited more than 20,000 students at 40 schools and generated over 1 billion media impressions.

The Make a Clean Difference campaign was aimed at our nation’s communities and Bounty consumers across the country, specifically teachers, parents and young students. In addition to supporting Bounty’s mission of giving back to its communities, the cause-related initiative had three main objectives or criteria for success:• Generate awareness around Bounty’s Back-to-School programming.• Communicate Bounty’s brand purpose of "hands on" creativity and "learning by doing" by engaging and mobilizing consumers to live the purpose.

• Drive "quality" messaging within media coverage pulling through key campaign elements.

Two strategic campaign partners were chosen:• HandsOn Network, the recipient of a $400,000 donation from Bounty, deployed its national volunteer network to help with the cleaning effort.

• Russell Simmons' Rush Philanthropic Arts Foundation offered artists who created Bounty-specific art lessons that are on display at BlogHer 2010 and available for download on Bounty’s Facebook page.A nationwide Facebook contest called for entrants in need of a $25,000 art-class room makeover.• A grand-prize winner and 10 runner-ups, who received $5,000 toward the cleaning and transformation of their art classrooms, were selected by consumer voting on submitted videos.

• The winner and finalists also were rewarded with a visit from the Make-a-Messterpiece bus that offered kids hands-on techniques for creating their own masterpieces.Well-known designers Cortney and Robert Novogratz of Bravo’s "9 by Design" were tapped to take part in the $25,000 "clean" makeover of the winning art classroom.

Garnered more than 1 billion media impressions nationwide through press releases, photo news releases, b-roll and proactive pitching to national and local media.Bounty’s Back-to-School contest received more than 800 school entries and more than 16,000 consumers voted. The program impacted more than 5,000 students at eleven schools across the United States.

Secured top placements including People, iVillage, New York Times, New York Magazine, Huffington Post, Cincinnati Enquirer and more. Key messages related to the importance of clean learning environments and inspiring creativity in our youth were prevalent in the coverage.

Created to position Bounty as a brand that is committed to giving back to communities through clean and fun learning environments, the multi-faceted, multi-tiered Make a Clean Difference campaign consisted of elements that would engage local and social communities while also building positive awareness about the Bounty mission. The first strategic element was aligning with partners that could provide a supportive volunteer network for cleaning our nation’s schools and artists that would inspire and help teach America's youth to unlock their curiosities and creativity.

The other key element of the campaign was a strategically timed back-to-school initiative that effectively utilized the brand’s social media platform. By leveraging Bounty’s Facebook page, the initiative would increase scale across the general market target and gather overall support for the Bounty program. Finally, the addition of a celebrity design element helped generate a major media buzz.

Bounty works toward making our world a little better. That means not only making products that work well, but making changes that can help make a difference. To show its continued commitment to this philosophy, the brand was looking for a difference-making cause-related initiative.

Research showed there is a link between the cleanliness of school facilities and students’ academic achievements. Yet, 25 percent of all schools reported at least one onsite building is in less than adequate condition. These findings uncovered an opportunity to give back – provide students cleaner learning environments - while bringing to life the Bounty brand’s purpose.