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Kruger and Mercedes deliver hygiene products to workers

By Christopher Lombardo
April 9, 2020

Kruger Products L-P--Kruger Products Rolls Out National Give-Bac

Kruger Products, maker of the Cashmere, Purex, SpongeTowels and Scotties household paper brands, and luxury automaker Mercedes-Benz Canada delivered the first in a series of care packages to frontline healthcare professionals at several hospitals across Montreal this week.

Packages include products from across Kruger’s brands, delivered using leveraging Mercedes-Benz’s and a fleet of its Sprinter and Metris vans. The deliveries will come to Vancouver and Toronto in the coming weeks. Kruger is also making a tissue donation to Food Banks Canada on top of a financial contribution to support frontline healthcare workers.

Susan Irving, CMO at Kruger Canada, says she and Virginie Aubert, Mercedes-Benz Canada’s VP of marketing, live in the same community and their kids know one another, spurring a quick chat about how to help those in need. A week later, their collaborative efforts paid off.

“Now more than ever it’s time for CPGs in this space to give back and say thank you,” Irving says. “As a Canadian company that produces tissue products, we recognize personal hygiene and hygienic safety is of paramount importance to individuals in our communities.”

When the COVID-19 pandemic first hit Canada, Irving says Kruger’s mandate, like most other companies, was to keep employees safe first, then focus on its consumers and accommodate a surge in demand in certain categories. Given the spike and a brief shortage at the retail level, Kruger suspended a Cashmere television campaign that was in market. It also opened old production lines, and the company is focusing its production on high demand brands and SKUs to be more efficient.

“Once we did that, we were able to take a step back and decided to expand our efforts to help Canadians in need,” Irving says. That means ensuring that front line workers who are time-starved can get needed products, as well as vulnerable foodbank users. “We are also asking our employees who may have extra stock to look after their neighbours by ‘roll-ing it forward’.”

Aubert says Mercedes-Benz has been engaging and inspiring seeing the two teams come together and to do it so promptly, adding that the automaker is also responding to the pandemic at the global level, whether it’s manufacturing critical medical equipment using its 3D printers – technology normally employed for prototype construction and small-series car production – or having its Formula 1 racing team work on developing breathing devices.

krugermercedesBoth brands have developed social media assets around the partnership, showing gratitude to frontline workers across healthcare, retail and other “essential” services during the pandemic. For Kruger, Strategic Objectives assisted with PR, John St. came up with tagline and creative and T1 helped organize efforts on the ground.