Getting People to Act on Your Cause-Related Marketing Campaign

What's Your Social Marketing Campaign's 'MacGuffin?'

Alfred Hitchcock, the legendary filmmaker, used to speak of a movie's 'MacGuffin,' or plot device. "In crook stories it is always the necklace and in spy stories it is always the papers," he said.

In short, a MacGuffin is a mechanical device that impels action.

Now for Hitchcock, the MacGuffin was often no more than a device, one that he often neglected after the action got going. But I'm not going to use the word that way. When I use the word I mean, what is in your cause campaign that makes the target audience act?

At first blush you might say that the cause or perhaps the offer is the MacGuffin. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, cause-related marketing campaigns sprouted up spontaneously and they worked. The cause was the MacGuffin in those cases.

The same could probably be said of several breast cancer charities and one or two environmental charities; the cause by itself impels action.

But not every charity that's worthy of a cause-related marketing campaign has enough punch, by itself, to impel action.

What might the MacGuffin be for charities like that?

It might be celebrity involvement. Singer-actress Jessica Simpson brings a lot of young people to Operation Smile who would not otherwise pay attention to a cause like that. Of course there are hundreds of other examples.

Firedog Across America, which I profiled on this blog, has a MacGuffin built into in its nomination process. Nominators are asked to visit a local firehouse before writing an essay in support of the firehouse. The MacGuffin is that the 10 people who nominate the 10 finalist firehouses get a $10,000 'tech makeover' courtesy of Firedog.

The MacGuffin could be the media component of the campaign. That, along with all the celebrities and breadth of scope, is the MacGuffin of the expansive Red campaign.

Now, a MacGuffin is no guarantee of success; not every Hitchcock film was a critical or popular success. Nor does the absence of a MacGuffin ensure failure.

But if your cause-related marketing campaign or social marketing effirst is missing a MacGuffin, it will probably underperform. In other words, even if you have a cause you think will draw and an offer that your target market will likely respond to, you may not be done.

You probably need a MacGuffin, too.

Have a favorite MacGuffin you'd care to share? Please comment.

Save Matt: Philips and the American Heart Association II

How the Save Matt Campaign Came Together and Was Promoted

Tuesday’s post was about how to use public relations to drive a cause-related marketing campaign drawing on the experience of the American Heart Association, RoyalPhilips Electronics and their Save Matt campaign. This posting will talk about how that promotion came about and outline some details and major elements.

The Save Matt promotion offered the American Heart Association $500 (up to a maximum of $20,000) for the signature of each celebrity who signed Philips' paper mannequin training mat (called 'Matt') during the run of the 2007 Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah.

At the end of the Festival Matt will be auctioned on eBay for an additional donation to the AHA.

Philips sponsored the Village Lift credentialing area. A variety of Philips products were on display in the area, called the Philips Simplicity Lounge. Among those products were some of the company’s automated external defibrillators. Celebrities who came into the lounge were asked to watch a demonstration of the defibrillators and were informed that if they signed Matt a donation would be made to the American Heart Association.

About 95 percent of those who were asked to sign Matt did, says Lolita Verny of Philips’ PR agency, Manning Selvage & Lee. Matt was signed by Kristen Bell, Billy Baldwin, Timothy Hutton, Tara Reid (see above), Tom Arnold, and others.

The promotion developed organically based on Philips experience at the 2006 Festival. Last year Philips also sponsored the credentialing lounge and demonstrated their automated defibrillators. Celebrities informally signed Matt.

Going into the Festival this year, Philips formalized the promotion. They contacted the American Heart Association, with whom Philips enjoys an existing relationship. The AHA agreed to participate and helped generate press materials.

In terms of the mechanics of the press campaign Philips put their release on the wire announcing the Save Matt cause-related marketing campaign about 10 days before the Festival started. As celebrities signed Matt, a Philips photographer snapped photos. Manning Selvage & Lee will send photos and press materials to select media outlets. After the Festival ends and Matt has been auctioned on eBay, Philips will issue another release.

The Save Matt campaign has already generated some welcome media coverage. Tom Arnold, who signed Matt, brought with him a crew from the Tonight Show into the Simplicity Lounge.

The Simplicity Lounge featured two other cause components. Philips’ Sonic Care line did a promotion benefiting Operation Smile. Celebrities were also offered a free compact fluorescent light bulb if they signed a pledge to install it in their home. Most did.

Given the amount of swag celebrities get at the Sundance Film Festival it was a small, but green gesture.

What was Philip’s goal for Save Matt? “Philips is looking to continue to raise awareness of sudden cardiac arrest (SCA) and potentially lifesaving equipment such as defibrillators,” says Ian Race, manager, public relations, corporate communications for Philips Medical Systems. “Having anyone stop by to ‘Save Matt’ helps to raise awareness and we want people to understand that there are easy to use tools to try to save an SCA victim. If the campaign helps to raise money for the AHA, it's all the better.”

Save Matt: Philips and the American Heart Association

PR-supported cause-related marketing

It’s probably fair to say that more cause-related marketing campaigns are supported by public relations than by advertising.

This is a sophisticated audience so there’s no need to detail the differences between advertising and public relations. Suffice it to say that while PR has greater credibility, it’s challenging to get the frequency using PR alone that you can get with advertising. Advertising offers frequency, but it can certainly be expensive and it’s less credible than PR.

Illustrated is an example of PR-supported cause-related marketing undertaken by RoyalPhilips Electronics to promote products like their OnSite Heart Defibrillator at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah.

Park City is very easy to get to and has a number of charms besides natural beauty and first-rate skiing. And so the Festival draws a lot of celebrities and a fairly chi-chi crowd. As a result when you watch Entertainment Tonight or Access Hollywood or any of the other entertainment news programs chances are that during the run of Festival, it’s a lead-pipe cinch that many of those shows originate from Park City.

As a result of the celebrities, the media attention, and the crowds, Sundance has become a promotional vehicle.

And so Philips along with other companies has established a presence in Park City for length of the Festival. The $41-billion (sales) Dutch giant has a drop-in location called The Philips Simplicity Lounge, where you can ogle their wares, including their lineup of home defibrillators.

While there’s plenty of national and international press at the Festival, there’s also plenty of competition vying for their attention. In a crowded marketplace how do you stand out? Philips is using PR supported cause-related marketing.

Their campaign, called “Save Matt” brings celebrities into the Simplicity Lounge to demo their home defibrillators on a “paper mannequin training mat.” After the demo, the dressed-in-black celebs, are asked to sign Matt the mat, which will subsequently be auctioned off on eBay for the benefit of the American Heart Association. In addition, Philips will also make a donation of $20,000 to the AHA.

I saw notice of the campaign in the hometown newspaper buried on page B-7 next to the obituaries. Needless to say Philips is hoping for better press coverage than that.

To do better their best bet is to work their strategy. They need to be snapping pictures every time a celebrity signs Matt and release those photos with a caption. There’s a lot of paparazzi at the Festival who will follow the right celebrity into locations like the Simplicity Lounge. So someone on the Philips staff with a lot of personality and persistence needs to be pulling celebs into the lounge.

The defibrillators are meant as a first-response to sudden cardiac arrest (SCA). Chances are there are celebrities at the Festival whose life has been touched by SCA. They need to find those celebrities and get them to the Simplicity Lounge. For the price of a defibrillator (about $1,270 at Sam’s Club, Staples, Walgreen, etc.) they could probably get that celeb to speak about their experience at a press conference.

Cantilena Music and the Cantilena Music Foundation

Sweet Music to the Cause-Releated Marketer's Ears

Is there any setting that cause-related marketing couldn’t be effectively utilized?

People ask me that question from time to time and my usual answer is “probably, I just haven’t found it yet.”

Once best known as a packaged goods promotion, nowadays cause-related marketing is even successfully used in B2B settings, although I’ve never heard any writer or researcher address that particular wrinkle.

So I’m not surprised to find cause-related marketing utilized by Cantilena Music, which provides commissioned music for companies, weddings, birthday and valentines gifts, and the like in packages ranging from $1,800 to more than $5,500. The price varies based on how many instruments the commission is to be written.

Cantilena… which means a “sustained, smooth-flowing melodic line”… coordinates musical commissions for its stable of composers. As the commissioner you get a classical-style piece several minutes long, the sheet music signed by the composer, and a CD with the recorded composition.

Here’s the cause-related marketing component: 15 percent of every commission goes to the Cantilena Music Foundation which “funds children who are hard of hearing.” That's appropriate the website points out, because not only was Beethoven a famously hard of hearing composer, so too were Frenchman Gabriel Faure and Czech Bedrich Smetana.

Beneficiaries include “the underprivileged in developing countries: as well as hospital patients through the donation of money and equipment for music therapy.” They also supply hearing aids.

That vagueness is a problem. They’ll certainly want to clarify that before too much time passes. Still, I have to applaud Cantilena for applying cause-related marketing not just tactically, but strategically; CRM is plainly a meaningful part of their business plan.

This is further proof that cause-related marketing is making inroads with high-dollar products and services.

Keeping Your Cause-Related Marketing Relationships Fresh

Add to the Bank

It’s fair to say that most marketers are likely to grow tired of their marketing long before their customers do. So after a few meaningful years it’s easy to look at your cause-related marketing relationships and wonder how to get out of them.

In most cases, that’s a mistake. Just as acquiring customers is more expensive than keeping them, so too with your cause-related marketing relationships.

Moreover, unless you’ve spent tens of millions of dollars on your cause-related marketing campaigns for a dozen years, chances are a big chunk of your customers still don’t know about it.

When I was at Children’s Miracle Network (CMN) every person on the staff had at least five anecdotes about individuals who had mistaken CMN for the Make-A-Wish Foundation. This despite the fact that CMN dwarfed Make-A-Wish, got good publicity, was associated with 170 children’s hospitals and 210 TV stations, and had a telethon that aired for 21 hours each year.

I’d bet money that after decades of advertising there is still a substantial minority of people who couldn’t tell you in a test of unaided recall that the Energizer Bunny fronts for Energizer batteries.

The real problem isn't that customers grow tired of your marketing, but that your marketers do. A new VP comes in and, wanting to leave his mark, changes everything. That's dumb.

The other danger is that the relationship between the cause and the sponsors grows stale. It’s just as likely to happen on the charity as the corporate side. Perhaps one party or the other takes the relationship for granted. Maybe less competent account reps take over. Whatever the case, the relationship can certainly sour.

There’s structural things the charity can do like switch around account reps. By nature, that’s probably what the company does. You can make sure that reps are closely supervised.

I would argue that the most important thing is the realization that these relationships can go south and that vigilance is the price of lasting relationships.

I would also argue that you have to treat these relationships like a marriage. Marriages grow stale when the partners quit working on the relationship. Only a fool quits telling his wife she’s beautiful. In the 7 Habits Stephen Covey wrote that business relationships were like marriage and that you need to keep making deposits such that the account balance is greater than the inevitable withdrawals.

What does this mean practically? It means that you have to keep coming up with new ways for the relationship to benefit your partner. Naturally, you need to start with a clear understanding of what it is that your partner wants from the relationship. And, just as in marriage, that’s a moving target.

Agree? Disagree? Weigh in with your opinion now.

Irwin Union Bank Donation

Is ‘Any Charity’ As Good as One Charity?

My posting about 505 Green Chile Sauce talked about how a company might go about picking a suitable charity to partner with in a cause-related marketing campaign. My posting on Firedog Across America revealed a study which shows that customers respond best to CRM campaigns when causes and companies are well-matched.

But what if you’re a bank and have all kinds of different customers who aren’t tightly segmented, but want to try your hand at cause-related marketing? Couldn’t you get away with supporting not just one charity with a cause-related marketing campaign, but ‘any charity?’

Illustrated is an ad for Irwin Union Bank, an Indiana bank with branches in nine states. Here’s the offer: When you open a new certificate of deposit with $10,000 or more, the bank will make a donation of $50 in your name to the charity of your choice.

So if you’re fan of Oxfam, Environment Defense, the local homeless shelter, or your church’s missionary work in Africa, the $50 would go to ‘any charity’ you designate.

The disadvantages of this approach are plain: Irwin Union misses out on public relations value; they’re not going to get any PR help from ‘any charity.’ They also lose much of the corporate halo effect as well. This isn’t a partnership, it’s a $50 donation.

But, the bank’s marketers might counter, “what we lose in partnership, we make up in added appeal. Our customers don’t care only for cancer or the environment or animal rights. Collectively they care for all those things. So supporting ‘any charity’ gives our campaign nearly universal appeal.”

So are ‘any charity’ appeals as effective as those for specific charities? I don’t know, but in the States the very largest charities are not single-issue entities but federated charities, like the United Way and the United Jewish Communities. When federated charities get their programs and marketing right, they can be all things to all people. And that’s very powerful.

If you have another answer to the question, please weigh in.

American Heart Association ‘Start’ Campaign

When Causes Market

The very largest charities in the States have enormous resources. The American Heart Association, for instance, has more than 200 chapters and affiliates, generates more than $900 million a year and had $647 million in its fund balance (read ‘profits’) as of 2004.

So it’s no surprise that they sometimes advertise, here for their Start 'movement' which is meant to motivate Americans to be more physically active. Nor is it surprising that the campaign has sponsors. Squint your eyes and look at the bottom of this ad and maybe you can see them. Or, you can just take my word for it that they are fast food sandwich chain Subway, food processor Healthy Choice, and pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca.

The ad appears in Sunday’s Parade Magazine, which appears as a supplement in the Sunday editions of 370 newspapers in the United States and claims circulation of nearly 33 million and a readership of 77 million.

Here’s a case where the cause-related marketing is being handled by the cause. It would be interesting to know what their goals for this ad are. I suspect this is ad is meant for branding the Start campaign and perhaps, secondarily, to recognize their sponsors.

For kicks I measured the logos of the sponsors. As printed they are approximately1/2 inch wide. Because of its horizontal format, the AstroZeneca logo is slightly larger. The ad itself is 5.5 x 71/8. Worse, the logos are reversed out onto the green of the grass. For all you can tell they’re small rocks that the happy couple pictured could stumble over.

Now Parade isn’t cheap. Assuming this ad appeared in the national edition, rather than one of the regional or zone editions the full rate card would be $408,400. To be fair, the American Heart Association probably didn’t pay the full rate card. They may have gotten the placement, which was surrounded by a two-column feature called, “You Can Lose Weight,” for free. Even if the Heart Association paid for some part of it, the ad was probably underwritten by sponsor money.

Free, discounted or paid in full, why are the logos of the campaign’s sponsors so darn small? What is the value of making your sponsors’ presence so discrete they can barely be discerned?

A few years back the big single-disease charities went through some breast-beating over cause-related marketing. After some notable scandals, the Attorneys General… the law enforcement authorities in each of the 50 states… gave them a little slap on the wrist and the charities responded by developing new policies to govern the kinds of cause-related marketing and corporate collaborations they would undertake, as well as what kind of language they could use in ads and promotions.

Some of the charities made penance and are back, the Arthritis Foundation comes to mind. Others, like the American Medical Association, were so chastened by their experience they no longer employ cause-related marketing. Some, like the American Heart Association, apparently try to split the difference.

The result is an ad that does next to nothing for their sponsors.

I hope the American Heart Association has strong relationships with its sponsors, because if I were one of them, I’d be a little steamed at this token effort.

VIVA Glam Lipstick for the MAC AIDS Fund

Sexier Than Thou

Think your cause-related marketing is hotter than a firecracker? Confident your campaign is so steamy it could set off fire alarms?

Unless you’re MAC Cosmetics you’re probably kidding yourself.

These two ads, which ran near the front of the June and October 2006 Lucky Magazine, are for the MAC AIDs Fund. The campaign features impossibly-beautiful women wearing MAC Cosmetics as well as some actual clothing.

The offer is refreshingly straightforward and bare as the models’ midriffs. “Every cent of the selling price of MAC Viva Glam Lipstick and Lipglass is donated to the MAC AIDs Fund to support men, women and children living with HIV and AIDs.”

The language cuts the lard out of so many cause-related marketing efforts that obfuscate the actual donation.

The markup for cosmetics is astonishing, so this represents more than just an effort on MAC’s part to move more SKUs. MAC is paying for things like the ad and its production, the packaging, the shipping and of course their lost profit margin out of their own pocketbook. Very generous indeed.

Of course MAC is betting is that once you try their cosmetics you’ll come back. Or, that your total purchase of MAC Cosmetics will be higher.

MAC Cosmetics has a reputation for savvy and unconventional marketing. The company began by giving away their cosmetics to makeup artists that worked with top models and actresses.

The MAC AIDs Fund website says that more than $85 million has been donated to AIDS causes worldwide since 1994. That’s much more than the higher-profile cause-related marketing relationship between Yoplait and Susan G. Komen which dates to 1997.

By definition, $85 million over 13 years is a very succesful cause-related marketing campaign. Call me a cause-related marketing geek, but I can't help but wonder what's doing the selling here? Is it the cause and the remarkably generous offer? Is it the sexy models and provocative ads? Or is it both?

It would be fun to test that question.

Feel free to chime in with your opinion.

Firedog Across America

More is More

This ad for Firedog Across America ran in the local newspaper last month. In the campaign people are invited to submit an essay that describes how a local firehouse has been a service to the community.

Firedog is the digital technology services division of electronics retailer Circuit City.

Ten firehouses will receive donations of $20,000 each and an additional $100,000 grand prize will go to the winning firehouse. The person who submits the winning essay for each of the 10 finalist will receive a “$10,000 tech makeover from Firedog.”

Once the ten finalists are determined, they will be posted at firedog.com where people can vote for their favorite entry. Over the course of 16 days each vote is worth $1 to that firehouse, although the total amount for all the firehouses is capped at $250,000, no matter how many ballots are cast.

I like the $10,000 inducement to get people to nominate a local firehouse. That all but guarantees responses. But what caught my eye was the donation amount; $200,000 to be split between 10 firehouses. Even though another $100,000 grand prize will be made to the winning firehouse, the total amount just seems too low.

The Firedog website says that the total donation may be as high as $650,000, but that includes two $100,000 donations that have already been made to the FDNY Foundation and the National Law Enforcement and Firefighters Children’s Foundation.

In general, the higher the donation greater the response. But in experiments conducted by Professor Mahmood M. Hajjat, PhD, at Sultan Qaboos University in Oman he found that this was only always true when the cause and sponsoring company were a ‘fit.’ When there was no fit, cause-related marketing did no better than ‘ordinary marketing.’

Now Professor Hajjat’s experiments measured only intent to purchase, so it’s an imperfect test in my view. The market itself would provide greater sureness. But it does provide some confirmation of what I’ve long suspect in my gut; more is more.

I think Firedog has a good fit with the firehouses of America. But in my view, Firedog Across America would perform better if the donation amount was greater.