Skip to main content

Get Away Today Vacations and Credit Unions for Kids

How to Raise $1 Million for Charity Without Transparency

I have ranted frequently about the hazards of cause marketing without transparency.

But the fact is, there are plenty of campaigns that manage to be successful without much transparency. Plenty that still cling to the obsolete language, “a portion of the proceeds,’ and do just fine.

How does that work? Am I wrong about the necessity of transparency? Maybe it’s more of a nicety than a requirement, like chives with your baked potato or seeing the Musee d’Orsay after touring Le Louvre.

Case in point is the back page of a small brochure that came stuffed in my credit union statement a few months back from Get Away Today Vacations (GATV). GATV is a privately-held travel agency with billings of about $50 million a year which built its business booking Disneyland vacation packages for families.

It’s a nice little niche. Chuck and Julie Smith, the husband and wife who own the agency, say, “We’ve been able to make our vacation our vocation.”

So how is it that GATV can raise more than $1 million for Credit Unions for Kids using weak language like “a portion of the purchase price?”

GATV markets extensively in partnership with credit unions in the Western United States. And in general, credit unions in the United States enjoy a sterling reputation, especially when it comes to customer satisfaction.

In effect GATV’s cause campaign for Credit Unions for Kids trades on the reputation of credit unions. Like a favorite restaurant or hairdresser, people trust their credit unions. “If the credit union has blessed it then it must be OK,” the thinking goes.

So how do you build a cause campaign that can raise more than $1 million without transparency? You build a great campaign and borrrow from the reputation of a highly-respected organization.

But imagine how much more powerful the promotion would be if GATV just said how much money from each transaction went to Credit Unions for Kids?


I submit it would be much more than $1 million.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Cause Marketing: The All Packaging Edition

One way to activate a cause marketing campaign when the sponsor sells a physical product is on the packaging. I started my career in cause marketing on the charity side and I can tell you that back in the day we were thrilled to get a logo on pack of a consumer packaged good (CPG) or even just a mention. Since then, there’s been a welcome evolution of what sponsors are willing and able to do with their packaging in order to activate their cause sponsorships. That said, even today some sponsors don’t seem to have gotten the memo that when it comes to explaining your cause campaign, more really is more, even on something as small as a can or bottle. The savviest sponsors realize that their only guaranteed means of reaching actual customers with a cause marketing message is by putting it on packaging. And the reach and frequency of the media on packaging for certain high-volume CPG items is almost certainly greater than radio, print or outdoor advertising, and, in many cases, TV. More to

Why Even Absurd Cause-Related Marketing Has its Place

Buy a Bikini, Help Cure Cancer New York City (small-d) fashion designer Shoshonna Lonstein Gruss may have one of the more absurd cause-related marketing campaigns I’ve come across lately. When you buy the bikini or girls one-piece swimsuit at Bergdorf-Goodman in New York shown at the left all sales “proceeds” benefit Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center . Look past the weak ‘ proceeds ’ language, which I always decry, and think for a moment about the incongruities of the sales of swimsuits benefiting the legendary Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. Cancer has nothing to do swimming or swimsuits or summering in The Hamptons for that matter. And it’s not clear from her website why Shoshanna, the comely lass who once adorned the arm of comedian Jerry Seinfeld, has chosen the esteemed cancer center to bestow her gifts, although a web search shows that she’s supported its events for years. Lesser critics would say that the ridiculousness of it all is a sign that cause-related marketing is

A Clever Cause Marketing Campaign from Snickers and Feeding America

Back in August I bought this cause-marketed Snickers bar during my fourth trip of the day to Home Depot. (Is it even possible to do home repairs and take care of all your needs with just one trip to Home Depot / Lowes ?) Here’s how it works: Snickers is donating the cost of 2.5 million meals to Feeding America, the nation’s leading hunger-relief charity. On the inside of the wrapper is a code. Text that code to 45495… or enter it at snickers.com… and Snickers will donate the cost of one meal to Feeding America, up to one million additional meals. The Feeding America website says that each dollar you donate provides seven meals. So Snickers donation might be something like $500,000. But I like that Snickers quantified its donations in terms of meals made available, rather than dollars. That’s much more concrete. It doesn’t hurt that 3.5 million is a much bigger number than $500,000. I also like the way they structured the donation. By guaranteeing 2.5 million meals, the risk of a poor