• by Karl Greenberg , February 18, 2011

Having funded a study by Wakefield Research in which teachers reported using 1.5 rolls of paper towels each week in the classroom, Procter & Gamble's Bounty brand began a campaign on Valentine's Day at 1,000 schools to get teachers to buy more P&G cleaning products. The effort used reality maven and mogul model Kimora Lee Simmons dangling a $50,000 designer classroom makeover.

The Make a Clean Difference Pledge at Bounty's Facebook page asks parents and teachers to submit their schools. Entries by March 4 become part of the company's "We Love Our School" sweepstakes. The first 500 schools to take the pledge will also receive a Bounty Clean Kit with enough Bounty and Mr. Clean product to clean all of their classrooms, along with a cleaning checklist.

Schools are fertile ground for marketers both because they have yet to be as thoroughly besotted with branding as the balance of American life, and also because they contain impressionable kids, who as research has shown, are flypaper for brand loyalty and vuvuzelas (those irritating horns from South Africa) for brand advocacy.