Earn Coupons And “Do Good” With New Rewards Program

Want to access coupons for your favorite brands, earn rewards and do good deeds for others? If you’re partial to Procter & Gamble products, you can check out the three-year-old P&G Good Everyday, which promotes “acts of good for you, your family, the community and the world.” Or, P&G competitor Unilever has now officially unveiled its own alternative – a new app called Leap Rewards.

The app gives users the “ability to save money and do good,” Unilever explained in its launch announcement, by promoting the use of “responsibly made brand products, while also unlocking important rewards to help their community and the planet.”

And if it encourages you to buy more Unilever products in the process, all the better.

Right now, the app has launched in Canada. When asked when and whether the app will become available for U.S. users, Unilever – a global conglomerate that employs a media relations team to promote new initiatives like Leap Rewards, and answer press inquiries about said initiatives – did not respond to numerous inquiries from Coupons in the News.

Perhaps they’re all too busy right now “doing good.”

It’s possible the Canadian launch is something of a test run before the app is offered more widely. So American shoppers may have to wait for the verdict from their Canadian friends, to find out whether Leap Rewards is a winner.

The way it works will be familiar to shoppers who use other savings apps. You might think of it as something of a combination of an app like Merryfield or Makeena, which focus on better-for-you products, and a brand-specific app like General Mills’ Box Tops For Education, which gives you rewards for buying any of a particular manufacturer’s many products.

Leap Rewards users can use the app to scroll through participating Unilever products with environmentally-friendly features, such as being plant-based, or made with a majority of recycled material, or sustainably sourced. Buy any of those products, upload a receipt, and you’ll get rewarded with points. You can then spend your points on coupons to buy more participating products, earn more points, redeem them for more coupons, and so on.

Points will also give you the ability to unlock rewards that can help you help others, such as donating a meal or planting a tree with the help of various partner organizations.

“Our research identified that Canadians rank climate change and the cost of living as two of their top five everyday concerns,” Robin Hassan, Unilever Canada’s Director of Digital Marketing, Media, and Commerce, said in a statement. “The Leap Rewards app was created to help Canadian shoppers with both of these concerns in tandem,” by allowing users to “benefit from savings while taking little everyday actions that can collectively benefit our planet and communities.”

The effort could also be good for Unilever, in raising awareness about its own products. Brand-specific loyalty programs, like the aforementioned efforts from Procter & Gamble and General Mills, can serve to make shoppers aware of just how many of their favorite brands are all under one corporate umbrella. Unilever’s brands, for example, including everything from Dove, to Hellmann’s, to Ben & Jerry’s, to Vaseline. By offering you rewards for buying their various products, the idea is to make you loyal not only to one brand, but to an entire portfolio of brands.

Early reviews are rolling in, and while some users complain they’re having trouble uploading receipts or downloading coupons, others are more pleased with their experience. “This is a great do-good feel-good app!” one reviewer wrote. “I’m so happy to have donated a meal already… Also got a coupon for my next Hellman’s mayo.”

So if you don’t mind downloading another app and uploading more receipts to earn rewards and save money – and if you happen to live in Canada – you might want to try out Leap Rewards. And if you live in the U.S., maybe someday we’ll find out whether you’ll be able to get the chance to “save money and do good” as well.