Cause Marketing Pastiche

Today’s post features a collection of all kinds of news relating to cause marketing, corporate giving and charitable donations. With my comments in italics.

Stationary for the Troops
For every $50 spent at FineStationary.com through the end of the year they will donate stationary, note cards and writing papers to members of the armed forces deployed overseas via Operation Gratitude. Hey, I appreciate businesses do what they can. But $50 is a pretty high threshold to trigger what amounts to an in-kind gift.

Corporate Giving up in 2007
The Committee Encouraging Corporate Philanthropy in New York released the results of a survey that found that corporations increased their giving in 2007 over the year prior when measured as median amount and when measured as a percentage of pre-tax profits. 2007 was a year of mixed economic news. Maybe this bodes well for 2008-9.

A Holiday Card that Gives
Network for Good offers a ‘Good Card’ this holiday season meant to serve as a client gift. You load the card with an amount of money… the increments are $10, $25, $50 and $100… and then via Network for Good the client can then make a donation to the charity of their choice. It’s pretty slick. I found the art on the card to be too clever by half. And it’s not clear whether or not the recipient could divide their gift between multiple charities. I also wonder who ends up with the donor data?

A New Online Giving Portal
Presently in beta is a new online giving portal called Razoo. As you make donations to charities Razoo creates a portfolio of your giving, compiling news items about the charities and the like. Razoo is also working on a private label option for corporations. My first reaction if I’m a charity is that there sure are a lot of outfits nowadays that are trying to get between me and my donors/potential donors.

Chocolate Truffles for Darfur
Los Angeles based Compartes Chocolatier offers truffles and other goodies, made with African ingredients, that benefit Relief International’s work in Darfur. Sounds yummy. I wish the website would have been transparent on the amount generated by the purchase.

Heroes at Home
Military Families sometimes go without while their loved ones serve abroad. This Christmas season Sears and Lands End are asking people to make donations to the 30,583 military families who have registered their needs/wishes at the Heroes at Home website. Singer Trisha Yearwood is the celebrity face of the campaign. I have a soft heart for the armed forces and those who ‘keep the home fires burning,’ so I have an special fondness for this campaign. If Sears wants this to grow, however, they’re going to have to do what General Mills did with it Labels for Education campaign and set Heroes at Home free.

Art Show LA
Make a donation to the Tereo School for street orphans in Helderberg, near Cape Town, South Africa and get free admission to the Art Show LA event on Dec. 17. A nice promotion well suited for Art Show LA’s audience.

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

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