Relations with the community

How Kraft shows support.

It's sort of ironic that my assignment for this week is to write about community support, because I tied it into my previous blog, without even realizing it.

On the week of October 5th, Kraft put on a community relations program called "Make a Delicious Difference Week. It was the company's first global week-long period of community service. It ran from October 5th through October 10th. More than 10,000 employees in over 32 countries participated in the event. Over 150 different company sponsored projects took place worldwide over the wee-long community service effort.

Kraft's focus.

The focus of Kraft's "Make a Delicious Difference Week" campaign is to fight hunger, support healthy lifestyles, and build strong communities. Kraft partnered with organizations all over the country such as Feeding America and Save the Children.

Kraft's mission.

As the second largest food company in the world, Kraft decided that they needed to give back to their communities on a larger scale. Kraft's mission statement is to help people around the world eat and live better, and I believe that this program did just that.
Here are a couple of example that illustrates some of the projects that Kraft took on around the world:


• In Russia, 200 employees participated in outdoor activities, such as planting at a park, repairing and painting a playground, and cultivating school gardens.

• In Costa Rica, more than 75 employees cleaned floors, painted walls, shared meals and led games at a foster home for abandoned kids.


Since 1997, the company has provided more than 1 billion servings of fresh food. Kraft contributes approximately $100 million annually by donating food and money to community organizations around the world. The company has committed $180 million in the next three year to community involvement activities around the globe.


Was Kraft's public relations department successful?

I believe this event was very good in terms of public relations. Kraft is an organization that you don’t hear too much about in the news, so I’m glad that this event gained a lot of positive press coverage for Kraft.

I’m currently a fan of Kraft’s facebook page, and they’ve really started utilizing it recently. Kraft posted a youtube video the other day, so I decided to see what it was all about. The youtube video explains what Kraft’s “The Delicious Difference Week” is all about.

The goal of the video is to spread awareness on how important volunteering is. Each time the video is watched, Kraft will donate 5 meals to Feeding America through the end of October. Kraft’s original goal was 100,000 meals, but Kraft said that they have already accomplished that. As a result of all of the support, Kraft promises to double their donation if they reach 100,000 views by the end of October.

With all said, I think Kraft did an amazing job in terms of their public relations efforts.

What else could Kraft be doing?

The only suggestion that I have for Kraft is that they may want to consider doing a week-long community service based event twice a year. I think it would really benefit communities, as well as Kraft employees and management.