Brief Explanation

About 20 typhoons hit the Philippines yearly, leaving thousands of casualties. And each year, the Red Cross receives 18 tons of donated clothes. But a good number are inappropriate for the everyday wear of calamity victims. These clothes could be worth more when sold. Procter & Gamble, with its laundry brands Ariel and Downy, in partnership with the Red Cross, sought to turn them into life essentials for calamity victims through Aid Couture. The clothes were meticulously sorted, washed with Ariel and Downy, and styled by the country’s top fashion personalities. The Aid Couture clothing sales were promoted across various media platforms. At the Aid Couture pop-up stores, design details spoke of aid. Price tags and receipts showed life essential equivalents. There was a real-time sales tracker on-site and online. From zero investment on clothes that otherwise would’ve been left rotting in Red Cross warehouses, Aid Couture cumulatively raised almost Php 1.8 million (approximately US$ 40,000) worth of aid during its first run on November 16-17, 2013 and a second one on August 2-3, 2014. The real-time sales tracker summarized this as amounting to 28,993 hot meals, 10,218 bottles of water, 1,378 medicine kits, 1,447 wound cleanser kits, 917 blanket and mat sets, 673 mosquito nets, 372 hygiene kits, and 817 food supply packs. All these were donated to the survivors of Typhoon Haiyan and other calamities. Based on computations by Campaigns PR Inc. (CAPRI), P&G earned a total media value of about Php 27 million pesos (approximately US$ 600,000)—without any actual media money spent. This included values from print, broadcast, online articles and social media. The campaign also earned a total of 1,614,164,180 impressions. Most importantly, Aid Couture provided a long-term solution for clothes deemed unsuitable for distribution during relief operations. Such program between P&G and the Philippine Red Cross allows both parties to continue responding to the needs of the Filipino people. Recently, other companies have reached out to P&G expressing their desire to join in future stagings of Aid Couture. The Red Cross is also considering staging Aid Couture in other countries as well.