• by Karlene Lukovitz , November 1, 2017

Pepperidge Farm Milano Cookies has partnered with automatic photo book app Chatbooks on a holiday-timed offer for busy moms, accompanied by a social media contest.

The idea behind the promotional partnership, called “Savor Your Everyday Moments,” is to help busy moms get more “me time” through a simple, automatic way of saving memories in photo book form. 

The holiday program is an extension of Milano’s 18-month-old “Save Something for Yourself” digital advertising campaign, from Y&R, featuring humorous videos showing moms, amid the constant demands of child rearing, jealously guarding their Milano Cookies and a few moments to savor them. 

Chatbooks lets users have all of their Facebook or Instagram photos, or favorite photos from their iPhones, auto-aggregated, with captions, on an ongoing basis. Each time 60 photos accumulate, Chatbooks sends an alert asking if the user wants to edit any of the photos or captions before the service prints out the photo book and mails it to the customer. Books are charged to the subscriber’s credit card when they’re produced. Subscribers can pre-determine how many books are produced, and cancel at any time.

From today through March 31, 2018, new Chatbooks customers who use the code MILANO when they sign up for the service are eligible for one free photo book (a value of $10), sponsored by Milano. 

The offer will be promoted through inserts in packages of Milano cookies and in photo book deliveries to Chatbooks customers, as well as through both companies’ social media channels.

For the co-sponsored social media contest, consumers can enter between Nov. 1 and Nov. 15 by posting an original photo on their Twitter or Instagram pages that shows how they find “me time” during the holidays (sharing visual “hacks,” in other words), using the hashtags #SavorYourMoments and #Contest. 

Four grand-prize winners, chosen by judges, will each receive a year’s supply of both Milano Cookies and Chatbooks. 

The promotional partnership is a “natural fit,” given that the Milano brand and Chatbooks both “acknowledge and celebrate the everyday mom and her everyday moments,” says Chris Foley, senior vice president and chief marketing officer for Pepperidge Farms. “This campaign was built on our mutual understanding of today’s busy woman, and the shrinking amount of time she has to herself.”

The same understanding is at the core of the “Save Something for Yourself” umbrella campaign. 

“Milano was ahead of the curve in being among the first brands to acknowledge that moms need time for themselves,” Foley tells Marketing Daily. Moms, who have long viewed the cookies as their proprietary “escape” — not infrequently hiding the treats from their families — report that they strongly relate to the video ads, he says. “They say, ‘You get me, you get my life!,’” he notes.

Milano sales began seeing an immediate lift when the campaign launched, and the brand’s ongoing gains have contributed to significant sales growth in the past year for the Campbell Soup Co.-owned Pepperidge Farm as a whole, says Foley. He points out that the company has seen 12 consecutive quarters of sales growth. 

Not surprisingly, Foley confirms that the company is committed to continuing “Save Something for Yourself” for “the long term,” adding that Milano’s sales gains have enabled greater investment in the campaign going forward. 

In fact, the plan not only calls for new creative — but for going beyond online, to also air TV spots — starting early next year, he reports.