Cheerios® Circle of Helping Hearts Tour®

WomenHeart is the only national patient advocacy organization for women with heart disease; promoting education and patient support. America's best-selling cereal, Cheerios® is the only leading, ready-to-eat cereal that has been clinically proven to lower blood cholesterol levels when eaten as part of a diet low in saturated fat and cholesterol.

As part of their 5-year support of WomenHeart, the brand pledged to donate up to $300,000 through the Cheerios® Circle of Helping Hearts® program. The purpose of the program is to educate women about heart disease, the number 1 killer of women in the United States. Consumers simply enter codes found on specially marked boxes of Cheerios® at the Circle of Helping Hearts® webpage-www.CheeriosHelpingHearts.com. Each time a code is entered, General Mills will donate $1 to WomenHeart to provide free cholesterol screening to women in need.

As the cause marketing agency for WomenHeart, First Degree was tasked with how to bring this fantastic promotion 'off the box' and deliver on its promises. The Cheerios® Circle of Helping Hearts Tour® was designed to provide women living in low income areas cholesterol screening as well as other heart health related screenings. High cholesterol is a leading risk factor of heart disease.

Reaching out to an existing partner of WomenHeart, GlaxoSmithKline, and rewrapping their medical screening Winnebago to look like a rolling Cheerios® box, First Degree was able to save the client marketing dollars and provide additional marketing exposure for an existing partner of the charity. This mobile display was also co-branded with the WomenHeart logo and the inside of the bus served as the screening facility.

Cheerios® teamed with their retail partner Safeway to provide locations in Southern California for the bus. Over 900 women attended the screenings where it was discovered that over 90% of those screened had one or more indicators for heart disease. Several individuals were taken immediately to local hospitals because their warning signs were so severe.

WomenHeart volunteers staffed the Circle of Helping Hearts Tour® stop locations and answered questions about women and heart disease. Each woman screened received a WomenHeart Red Bag of Courage® which provided additional educational materials and products to further help them live a heart healthy lifestyle.

First Degree managed all aspects of the design, implementation and post event wrap-up. The partnership between Cheerios® and WomenHeart continues today with a documentary of the Cheerios® Circle of Helping Hearts Tour® on the Cheerios® website.

2010 PR Newswire Platinum Award Winner - Best PR Event