Your three follow up points are particularly insightful.

Enabling customers to make further donations online to Wawa’s charity of choice would have been a natural progression of what Wawa was doing in it shops.

Thanks for pointing that out so clearly.

Liam, your final suggestion is a good one. Wawa has made it easy for their customers to get involved with the Red Cross through their coffee sleeves, but not so much on the site.

It is important to include Red Cross linkages on their site because:

1. Higher Contribution Rates – customers will contribute more. They are already at their computer. A smaller percentage of people will call the number on the sleeve.

2. Low Cost – The cost to implement this linkage is negligible to Wawa. The upside is potentially large.

3. Increased Brand Awareness – If Wawa makes acquiring information about the Red Cross and donating to the Red Cross easier for customers who care about social issues, those customers will associate Wawa with the strong brand of the Red Cross for a many years.

The Barcelona comparison is a good one. Another great example of large company (any football club that size is definitely a company!) keeping a steady focus on the community from which it draws its customers.

And thanks for the tip on the ‘wah wah’. Very cool indeed.

The closest analogy I can come up with is FC Barcelona (http://www.fcbarcelona.com/web/english/) and Unicef (http://www.unicef.org.uk/) i.e. Barcelona effectively turning down lucrative shirt sponsorship for a good cause. Their view was that nothing could buy the ‘Barca’ shirt.

Coming from an innovation agency perspective, it’s also refreshing to see CSR coming through in this way.

Not connected in any way but “wah wah” in Hindi (India) means “well done” so well done indeed to Wawa.