P&G brandSAVER FSI for UNICEF

Let Us Now Praise Good Cause-Related Marketing

So far there are six posts at causerelatedmarketing.biz and everyone of them has been critical to one degree or another. The point of this blog isn’t to flame every cause-related campaign I see as bad or inadequate. I expect there’s more to be learned more from good campaigns than bad ones.

So, on All Hallow’s Eve I want to back off my criticism to praise a cause-related campaign from a company that consistently gets cause-related marketing right, Proctor & Gamble.

This cause-themed FSI for UNICEF, which dropped circa September-October 2006 is one of Proctor & Gamble’s monthly “brandSAVER coupon booklets.” I haven’t kept count, but the cause-themed brandSAVERs seem to appear at least quarterly. They’ve done a year-end FSI for Special Olympics for many years and I’ve seen special versions for the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, VH-1 Save the Music, and others. They’ve done an FSI for UNICEF for at least four years.

During the years they’ve done cause-themed FSIs, Proctor & Gamble has been through at least three CEOs and the brands featured in the FSIs have had more managers than Tide has been called “New & Improved.” In other words, these cause-themed FSIs are part of the DNA at Proctor & Gamble.

You can also be certain that these promotions work, Proctor & Gamble is too market-driven for it to be otherwise.

As a result, there isn’t a cause (that’s already comfortable with cause-related marketing) that wouldn’t happily trade three of their board members for a relationship with P&G, if only for the sake of the prestige it carries.

Here’s what’s good about this FSI:

+ They use a whole FSI, not just a few pages. This is a considerable commitment of time and treasure. I can guess at the price of a whole FSI of the size of the brandSAVER, and it’s more than a few Italian sports cars.

+ They theme it to Halloween, which is now the second best holiday for promotions in the United States. Part of this is simple good fortune for P&G. Trick or Treat for UNICEF which dates to 1950, has raised $132 million over the last 56 years at Halloween time. So a trick or treat for UNICEF FSI promotion couldn’t really take place in, say, June.

+ They tell UNICEF’s story, but they don’t bludgeon you with it. This is absolutely vital. Never show starving kids in an FSI! To marketers on the charity side I would say, remember your audience isn’t major donors. Nor is it people sponsoring a child. Instead it’s people willing to support your cause by buying something, mainly household products.

+ The visuals make the message clear, support “kids in need” by taking your kids trick or treating for UNICEF. The visuals are reinforced often with different, but complementary photos on full and partial pages.

+ The specifics of the campaign including where the money goes and how to participate are explained with just enough detail, but not too much.

+ Proctor & Gamble isn’t shy about mixing causes in a cause-themed brandSAVER, so the UNICEF FSI shares space with Make-A-Wish and a cause message about the environmental uses of Dawn dish detergent. P&G doesn’t try and force UNICEF unto their brands for which the promotion doesn’t make sense or which have other existing cause relationships.

On this blog I have taken to task other sponsors who have not included donation amounts, but I won’t with P&G because they’ve been doing this so long they’ve earned our trust.

Another first-rate effort from one of the world’s best cause-related marketers, Proctor & Gamble.

Annual Women & Business Conference

Coulda Woulda? Shoulda

Imagine an existing event with a successful 30-year history aimed at women in business. Imagine a well-known celebrity pundit and mother as the keynote.

Now imagine a nice cause ‘overlay,’ as we used to call it at Children’s Miracle Network: maybe a donation is made to a local kids cause with every early registration. Maybe there’s a silent auction at the event benefiting single moms in poverty. Maybe there’s an incentive for bringing usable professional women’s clothes that would go to Dress for Success. Or maybe there’s a breakout session that explains to attendees how to add the power of cause-related marketing to their companies or businesses. (All modesty aside, yours truly could help with that).

Well in this ad for the Annual Women & Business Conference and award luncheon you’re going to have use your imagination, because neither the sponsors… American Express, Wells Fargo, the Salt Lake Chamber, and others… nor the organizers included a cause-related marketing overlay.

That’s a pity. In both qualitative and quantitative studies, women make it abundantly clear that they are motivated to make the world a better place. Viktor Frankl says we all search for meaning in life. But I would argue that women feel that longing more acutely than men. Marketing studies certainly show that women are more responsive to cause-related marketing than are men.

The conference obviously has staying power, but a cause overlay… done well… would really help bind the attendees emotionally to the sponsors and to the event.

For instance, I can imagine brief testimonials from one or more women who had benefited from past Dress for Success clothing drives and now, some time later, are in the workforce, in part because of the confidence professional clothing gave them going into interviews.

The ad, which appeared in the October 2006 issue of Utah Business Magazine, is fine as far as it goes. It just could have gone a lot farther.

Cute Mini Ad Has Room for Improvement

Cute Ad. And Not Terribly Useful.

Austin Minis are so doggone cute, when I see one in a parking lot I just want to pinch its little bottom. I feel much the same way about their ad for Meals on Wheels that runs in the November 2006 issue of Fast Company.

We’re giving over some ad space for a needy cause, “to red light hunger,” the ad says, and that's good. The Meals on Wheels Association of America in Alexandria, Va., helps enable meals to the nation’s elderly in local cities and towns, and can make good use your donation. No doubt any of the nation’s dozens of Meals on Wheels affiliates, where the rubber actually hits the road, would say the same.

But the ad strikes me as a one-off, and... if so... that would be too bad. I couldn’t find anything about a deeper relationship on either the miniusa.com website or at moaa.org. God bless Mini USA and their ad agency Sausalito, California-based Butler, Shine, Stern and Partners for thinking of a charity to support in this way, but I’d be surprised if the ad generates as much in donations to Meals on Wheels as it cost to design and run the ad.

That’s because magazine ads are terrific at generating awareness and even interest, but not so good at creating desire, commitment, or action. Rare is the magazine ad that will levitate the phone to a donor’s ear and a credit card to her hand.

Mini engenders great customer loyalty. They have an owner’s-only section of their website. They sell gear, including wearables, there, too. Given that, if I were Meals on Wheels, I’d rather have a one-time fundraising message in Mini’s owners’ newsletter than a one-time ad in Fast Company, sexy as that audience is. Better still, I’d want use of Mini’s owners list gratis with an endorsement letter from Mini USA.

But Butler, Shine, Stern and Partners (bsands.com) probably can’t do that deal all by themselves. That’s why savvy charities work to build a strong relationship with the sponsor that’s distinct from the agency.

Mini USA did a nice thing here, a cute thing. Too bad they didn’t do a useful thing.

A Cheer-and-a-half for Soft and Dri’s FSI Ad

Made by a Man? But is it Strong Enough For Women?

This ad for Dial’s antiperspirant/deodorant Soft and Dri, appeared in an FSI during October 2006, National Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

I like the ad, but I wonder if that isn’t because I’m a man. The copy and design are quite clean, in a way that men tend to like. The headline is spare and the call to action straightforward, as is the offer. The product is wrapped by an iconic pink ribbon.

The ad size was just 7 x 5.387... half an FSI page... so I suppose the designers would claim that they didn’t have the space to take the ad in another direction. And they'd certainly be right.

But research suggests that women like (or at least will read) ads with more copy. Considering what Y-Me does, it might have been preferable in this case. Among other things, Y-Me National Breast Cancer Organization runs a hotline… staffed exclusively by breast cancer survivors… that answers the anguished calls from women who have learned that they or a loved one has cancer.

With a ‘story’ like that, why wouldn’t they size this up to a full-page ad and show a women answering those calls? Why didn’t they spend a short paragraph on Y-Me’s mission? instead of the hollow “to empower those who can’t wait for tomorrow’s cure.”

Since agency creatives still tend to be male (even if the account person isn't) I'd bet this ad came from a man. I don't think that only women can or should write for women, or vice versa. But when you're designing for the other gender, you better do what Mel Gibson did in What Women Want and put on a pair of panty hose (or a strangulating necktie) as you read the research about the differences in what men and women respond to.

And viva le difference!

A Raspberry for Linens 'n Things Ad

An Ad that Tries to Do Too Much and Fails

Charities… even sophisticated and well-funded entities… are often guilty of trying to make their marketing collateral do too much. But in this ad for a multipart cause-related marketing promotion, it is the sponsor who muffs it by trying to do too much.

Here’s the list of vendors or corporate partners:

* Linens ‘n Things
* MasterCard
* Gund
* Homedics
* Yankee Candle
* + 2 unknown brands.

Here’s the list of potentially benefiting charities:

* National Breast Cancer Foundation, Inc.
* Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation
* Val Skinner Foundation for Breast Cancer
* Breast Cancer Research Foundation
* + other potential but unnamed beneficiaries.

Here are the elements of the promotion:
* Add a dollar to your Linens ‘n Things purchase between October 1-31, 2006 (October is National Breast Cancer Awareness Month) and:
- Linens ‘n Things will match the donations up to $100,000
- MasterCard will match the donations up to an additional $100,000
- The total potential donation, therefore, is more than $300,000

Although the ad says “with the purchase of special items, a portion of the proceeds will go to foundations,” and provides the charities listed above, it’s not clear what those donation amounts are. When you go to LNT.com and view the items in the circular a popup box refers only to the add-a-dollar portion of the promotion.

The money, we are told, will fund free mammograms and breast cancer education, which is the primary mission of National Breast Cancer Foundation, Inc.

All this in a 6x9 ‘ad’ in a Linens ‘n Things circular.

Missing, of course, is which charities get what. Also missing is clarity about the donations apparently generated from the sales of the themed products.

What could have helped? A smarter approach would have been to split this ad up or lengthen it to a full page. Circular pages cost money, of course, and sponsors want to maximize their space. But if Linens ‘n Things shortchange a promotion that does, after all, presumably carry benefits for them, then they shortchange themselves as well as the benefiting charities.

Now, maybe the in-store promotional materials are more clear, but even if they are, this promotion was probably designed in part to drive traffic to the store. This ad doesn’t do that.

It also would help if the whole thing were a good deal more transparent. You couldn’t get all these details in the ad, but it could have directed readers to a micro-website that explains it in better detail and includes links and the like.

All in all, a raspberry to Linens ‘n Things for this overly-complicated ad.

A Raspberry to Hamilton Collection's Promotion

Time Warp Cause Marketing from Hamilton Collection is Potentially Deceptive and Certainly Less Effective Than it Could Be

Hamilton Collection’s “Breast Cancer Charity Collectible Shoe Figurine: Hope” (whew!) is cause-related marketing at its finest, circa 1989.

This product, advertised in an FSI that dropped in September or October of 2006 would have been cutting edge 17 years ago. Now it appears, at least outwardly, to be deceptive.

Why? Several things are conspicuously absent from this ad. The first, of course, is mention of which organization(s) will benefit from the sale of the “Hope” shoe. The second is any suggestion of how much donation will devolve to the unnamed organization(s) from each sale. When that information is missing, it’s easy to wonder if the promotion’s legit.

Worse, the first sentence of the body copy “…share in the hope for the future with this inspiring sculpture designed to help increase breast cancer awareness…” does little to dispel any doubts. Because you could argue that just having a Hope shoe in the households that buy them accomplishes mission of increasing breast cancer awarness. So who and what is the donation for?
Back in 1989, when cause-related marketing was still in its toddlerhood you could get away with these shortcomings. Now you can’t.

I don’t know any more about this promotion than what I read on the ad and on Hamilton’s website, which mirror each other, but part of the fault could lie with the breast cancer charities. As charities grow in size and their brand takes on additional meaning, they get all kinds of offers to do these kinds of promotions. To divide the wheat from the chaff the charities begin to require minimums, guarantees or additional fees from sponsors.

The approach works, but just as some wheat blows away with the chaff, some legitimate… if smaller... sponsors are lost to the winds.

But not listing the specific amount of donation is Hamilton Collection’s claimed donation is the company's fault, and bad cause-related marketing. In general, higher donations increase sales, although determining the exact best donation remains more art than science.

Finally, there’s the product itself. Many marketers to women decry the “pink it and shrink it” approach that Hamilton Collection has taken here. And although it isn’t always necessary for the product and cause to be related in a cause-related marketing promotion, a shoe named ‘Hope’ and breast cancer seem strained.

So a raspberry to Hamilton Collection for this ill-conceived cause-related marketing promotion.

Eyeballs Vs. Tears

Barely a day goes by that I don't see some kind of cause-related marketing, some good and some not so good.

With this blog I will examine in detail those cause marketing promotions, advertising and campaigns; when they get it right, and where it goes wrong.

Cause-related marketing has been around for more than 20 years now. Even people who don't know the term, understand what it's all about; send in the Yoplait lid and 10 cents goes to the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation.

But, according to IEG, while cause-related marketing is growing faster than sponsorship as a whole, cause-related marketing currently represents less than 10 percent of the larger sponsorship market. That sounds like a positive, but cause-related marketing has been as high as 10 percent of sponsorship.

For all its heart, cause-related marketing is still settling for the sloppy seconds left over from the NFL, NASCAR and the like. I think that's because while those big guys understand that sponsorship is about eyeballs, the sisters of the orphans and all their charity cousins think it's about tears. When it comes to cause-related marketing, they're only half right.