Happy Thanksgiving, Cause Marketers, Wherever You Are

Kind Readers:

Today in the United States is Thanksgiving Day, a harvest festival primarily in North America. In Canada Thanksgiving occurs on the second Monday in October.

Like harvest celebrations everywhere... since time immemorial... it's front-loaded with mythology.

But we North Americans have given our modern harvest festival its own distinct spin; it’s a time of gratitude, televised parades, jam-packed airports, a bad Detroit Lions Football game, and feasting.

In honor of that part of Thanksgiving I publish a poem from kids’ poet Jack Prelutsky.

I Ate Too Much Turkey
by Jack Prelutsky

I ate too much turkey,
I ate too much corn,
I ate too much pudding and pie,
I’m stuffed up with muffins
and much too much stuffin’,
I’m probably going to die.

I piled up my plate
and I ate and I ate,
but I wish I had known when to stop,
for I’m so crammed with yams,
sauces, gravies, and jams
that my buttons are starting to pop.

I’m full of tomatoes
and french fried potatoes,
my stomach is swollen and sore,
but there’s still some dessert,
so I guess it won’t hurt
if I eat just a little bit more.

Happy Thanksgiving to all of you, wherever you are.

And to Katie, happy birthday!

Yes, Virginia, there is Christmas Cause Marketing (and there should be more)

Dear Editor

I am more than 8 years old. Some of my peers say that there is no Christmas cause marketing. Papa says, “if you see in the cause marketing blog, it’s so.” Please tell me the truth, is there Christmas cause marketing?

Virginia O’Hanlon

Virginia, your little friends are almost right. There’s not much Christmas cause marketing going on in the States. Charities large and small have carved out the
Halloween season (October). St Jude has branded Thanksgiving (which falls on the
fourth Thursday in November in the United States). You’ll see cause marketing
promotions on virtually every American holiday: St. Patrick’s Day, Valentines
Day, Memorial Day, Labor Day, etc.

But Christmas? Not so much.

This despite the fact that many charities do their best fundraising in the Christmas season. Annual giving is very big at Christmas time for many charities. And corporate earnings rise and fall depending on how well they do at Christmas. And yet, there’s precious little cause marketing and certainly not many ‘big’ campaigns.

That is, until now.

Macy’s and the Make-A-Wish Foundation have launched a campaign at Christmastime called Macy’s Believe. I was about to write that it’s a Christmas campaign, but strictly speaking it’s not. It’s a Santa Claus campaign. The thinking among marketers is that modern American society is at present too pluralistic to use
the ‘C’ word in broad-reaching marketing campaigns. This because for last 25 years or so Christmas celebrations in the United States have been an unsteady balance between the secular and religious.

To sidestep the Christian denotations of Christmas, Macy’s and Make-A-Wish instead revivify a hoary old story from 111 years ago involving 8-year-old Virginia O’Hanlon, who wrote a letter questioning the veracity of Santa Claus to the editor of The New York Daily Sun, Francis B. Church.

Here’s how Macy’s Believe works: When you bring a stamped letter addressed to Santa Claus to a Macy’s store, they will donate $1 per letter to the Make-A-Wish Foundation up to a total of $1 million. Macy’s will also deliver the letters to the post office.

The website is nicely put together, if a little thin. There’s the Virginia O’Hanlon story, something about Make-A-Wish, the make yourself into Santa exercise that you see above, and a commercial featuring Macy’s ‘stars’ Jessica Simpson, Carlos Santana, Donald Trump, Martha Stewart and others.

I wish there was more about the connection between Make-A-Wish and Macy’s. Where’s the stories about Macy’s stores and employees that played some role in granting a wish to kids? Sans that Macy’s Believe is missing some heart.

I like the social media capabilities built into the “Be Clause,” activity. And I was delighted at how well designed the user interface was.

All that said, there’s still room for more and other Christmas cause marketing campaigns. Especially since Macy’s and Make-A-Wish aren’t actually attaching their campaign to Christmas.

Want to know how to do that? Take a lesson for St. Jude’s terrific Thanks and Giving campaign.

Do that and Christmas will make glad the heart of cause marketers.

Sincerely,

The Editor

Boston Law Firm Uses Green Cause Marketing Tactic

Hell has officially frozen over.

Boston law firm Sherin & Lodgen announced on Friday, Nov. 15 that during 2009 it will discount 15 percent from its standard rates to clients housed in buildings which are existing or registered LEED certified.

As I’ve pointed out before, cause marketing is about motivating certain behaviors. Usually it involves money going to a cause. However, there are plenty of examples of non-transactional cause marketing like this around.

But a law firm promoting that will discount its prices? Sacrebleu! De telles choses ne sont pas faites. Such things are not done.

Now, truth be told, you could probably go into Sherin & Lodgen… or darn near any other law firm… and negotiate a 15 percent discount off of standard rates and not even break a sweat. Especially given the current economy.

But reputable, non-ambulance-chasing law firms don’t ever talk openly about discounting and they certainly don’t issue a press release about it. Someone call the ethics section of the Bar Association!

That said, Sherin & Lodgen’s exposure probably isn’t that great. I couldn’t find anything that tells me how much LEED certified office space there are in Boston, but I’d be very surprised if it represents even 1 percent of the total. Plus, Sherin & Lodgen basically has three specialties; real estate law, litigation and business law. If you need IP help, you’re out of luck with Sherin & Lodgen. And, the discounting continues only through 2009.

At least once a year I see a cause marketing campaign that no one could have predicted even 5 years before. And this year I’ve already seen two such examples.

Amazing.

Cause Marketing House Brands

In the declining economy, people in the UK, the US and elsewhere are buying more ‘house brands.’

Of course they are, you say. What could make more sense than to get the same-quality or nearly the same quality for a meaningful savings?
I don’t have a handy chart to demonstrate, but this is what always happens in bad economic times. When the economy dips, sales of cheaper house brands and generics take off. And when the economy recovers consumers go back to the major brands.

For the foreseeable future, price is going to be major driver for the consumer.

Imagine this scenario: a shopper faces two cans of cream of mushroom soup, the store brand and the dominant brand in the US, Campbell's. The store brand has respectable quality and is 26 percent cheaper per ounce.

In a face off like that, Campbell’s market share would erode very seriously sans their incredible market shelf space and decades-old Labels for Education program, in my view.

Now if the store brand started a well thought-of cause marketing campaign of its own, all bets are off.

However, I’ve never seen a store brand in the States undertake transactional cause marketing, even though their margins for house brands are generally better than what they make selling the national brands.

I encourage the big national retailers to try cause marketing with their house brands. Because now, in the sour economy, is the perfect time for the bold stroke. Of course, you’d want to test the concept, the approach and the cause with a limited number of markets and a select group of products.

Get that cause marketing campaign right, and when the economy improves, not all consumers will go back to the national brands.

I’d bet on it.

Needless to say, and forgive the commercial interruption, if you need help getting the campaign right, Alden Keene is here for you.

Cause Marketing Triple Play

Plus 3 Network wants to turn your “sweat equity into social capital,” and they’re using a non transactional form of cause marketing to do it.

Here’s what that means: You register at Plus 3, a kind of social media network, and then keep an online log of all your workouts. Each mile you train… mainly running, walking and biking… translates to a small donation paid for by sponsors to a select group of charities. Certain training activities are also awarded with prizes or rewards like chain lube or training socks.

So you get fitter and maybe some new socks, the sponsor gets the usual benefits of cause marketing and the charity gets a donation. Of course, Plus 3 gets something out of it too.

It’s a cause marketing triple play.

The donations are higher when you upload the data from a GPS enabled device than if you make a hand entry. For instance, walking pays out $.05 a mile when uploaded from Garmin GPS device, but just $.0167 when you hand enter the data. Plus 3 says this is because there’s less chance fraud when the data comes from the Garmin.

The site is still in beta and they have a few wrinkles to iron out. For instance, I’m a rower. Rowing measures distance in meters rather than miles. Same with anybody who trains in any sport outside the United States. And anybody who trains indoors on treadmills, bikes, or indoor rowers can’t currently get the higher donation numbers.

The success of Plus 3 depends a whole lot on how well they market it. But it is an intriguing concept and very copyable.

For instance, RIF could do the same with reading. The American Diabetes Association, the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, and Susan G. Komen could all do versions of this for people who want to train, but not necessarily compete in their 'tour' events. It could be the Tour de Cure lite.

I don’t know if Plus 3 Network built their website from scratch or not, but you could probably get really close by just modifying Ning, the social network engine.

I expect that starting with Ning the health and wellness division of a large company could build something just like Plus 3 for their employees. Or, for that matter, Plus 3 could sell their engine to large companies for the same purpose, with the employer acting as the sponsor.

This concept holds a lot of possibilities.

Want a Reputation as a Good Corporate Citizen? Do Some Cause Marketing

The Reputation Institute and the Boston College Center for Corporate Citizenship recently released their list of the top 50 companies in the United States in terms of corporate social responsibility.

In the survey of public opinion, the top ten were:

Google

Campbell Soup

Johnson & Johnson

Walt Disney

Kraft Foods

General Mills

Levi Strauss

UPS

Berkshire Hathaway

Microsoft

I took the list and ranked the 50 according to the amount of cause marketing that I’m aware of from each company.

• 0 meant that I had never seen any cause marketing from them.
• 1 meant I’m aware of cause marketing promotions about once a year.
• 2 meant I’m aware of perhaps two cause marketing promotions a year.
• 3 meant I’m aware of perhaps monthly cause marketing promotions in a year.
• 4 meant I’m aware of the company’s cause marketing as often as once a week
• 5 meant I'm aware of cause marketing from the company on a daily basis.

Of the 50 companies, the only one I was unaware of was Express Scripts, a pharmacy services provider. I gave them a 0.

In my ranking a clear majority… 31 out of the 50… did at least some cause marketing. I ranked three companies as a number five; Campbell’s, General Mills, and by virtue of their IM promotion, Microsoft. No company got a four, but 12 companies got a 3, six companies got a 2 and 10 companies got a one.

Among the top 10, I ranked only two companies as a zero. I don’t recall ever seeing cause marketing from Levi Strauss or UPS. Berkshire Hathaway, a conglomerate, got a ranking of 2 based in its ownership of Dairy Queen. Most of the other nonconsumer companies like Deere, Sun Microsystems, Boeing and others got a zero.

Plainly my rankings are imperfect. It could well be that Levi Strauss, UPS and the 17 companies I gave a ranking of 0 to in fact do cause marketing that I’m just unaware of. Although I think it's more likely that I'm more aware of cause marketing than the average member of the public.

Certainly I could have inflated the amount of cause marketing I attribute to some of the companies on the list.

But for me the take-home is clear: three out of five US companies with the best corporate reputations in the public eye do some cause marketing as do eight out of the top 10. Three out of the top 10, do cause marketing continously.

If you would like a copy of my ranking or would like to rank them yourself, email me at aldenkeene @ gmail . com and I'll send you the excel spreadsheet.

Humble Cause Marketing Consultant Mocks Mighty Ketchum

If you were the CEO of a food company, what would be your top priority for the company?

• Making a profit, you say?


• Employing people?


• Providing food to people who want or need it?


• Supporting your family?

Ha, silly you.

In a survey published in October by Ketchum, 1000 people… 200 each in the US, UK, Germany, Argentina and China… were asked what they’d do if they were CEO of global food company.

Before I ridicule the poll from Ketchum, a global PR agency and a unit of the jinormous Omnicom Group, let me address the two elements of the study pertinent to cause marketers.

• In those five countries, more than 40 percent say they would pay more for food if it would improve water and food deliver medicine to the needy.


• The consumers who said they’d be most responsive to this cause marketing-like approach were from China (64 percent) and Argentina (58 percent).

That would be potentially interesting if the rest of the survey were actually credible.

The survey mainly asked pretty standard questions: “When making food purchases, what factors do you consider?” “Where do you think consumers should have more say, control, involvement?”

But then they jumped the shark and asked a silly Barbara Walters type question. (When Walters once interviewed Katherine Hepburn, she asked what kind of tree the actress thought she would be.)

Ketchum asked: “If you were CEO of a global food company, which of the following, if any, would be your top priority?” Then they provided a universe of nine possible answers:

“Improving human nutrition; Making food that is safer; Making foods that taste great; Making foods that cost less; Ending malnutrition; Solving the obesity crisis; Ending hunger; Using power/dollars to make a difference; Making a profit.”

Those are listed in the order they finished in the survey. ‘Improving human nutrition’ finished first among all with 65 percent and ‘making a profit’ finished last with 33 percent.

The western jingoism of the questions is stunning. One wonders how ‘solving the obesity crisis’ question would have played in western China. And, ‘ending malnutrition?’ It would be analogous to ask Ketchum’s CEO… who is, after all, a professional communicator… to make a corporate priority of healing the communications rift between the Arabs and the Jews.

If pressed, I’m sure Ketchum would frame these answers as aspirational.

But if a company isn’t making a profit, no other good it could do is sustainable. Ketchum's canned answers are an illogical nonstarter.

And surveying 1,000 people in five countries with a combined population of population of more than 1.7 billion is statistically inadequate to say the least.

It’s hard to take this survey from Ketchum as anything besides PR agency puffery.

Pinked Out Poll Results

In the last week of October I put up a Vizu poll that asked: "It's the end of Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Are you 'Pinked Out?'

Here are the poll results:

• Yes: 58.8 percent
• No: 35.3 percent
• Don't Know: 5.9 percent

Cause Marketing in the Economic Downturn

Get Your Chin off Your Chest


It’s probably just superstition, but I have steadfastly avoided posting anything about the recession.

After all, considering the amount of liquidity sloshing around after all the actions already taken by central bankers in Asia, Europe, and the United States, it’s plain that the real problem right now isn’t access to capital. The problem is one of confidence.

This is just one small little blog on the semi-obscure topic of cause marketing, but I see little reason to pile on.

So, assuming that the economy doesn’t turn into Oklahoma circa 1935 (Dustbowl deflation) or the Weimar Republic of 1923 (hyperinflation), this will be my first and last posting on the topic of the economy.

In the States, economists are struggling with exactly which recession to compare this one to. Is it like the downturns of 2000, 1980 and 1974? Is it a second Great Depression? (Short answer: No. For one thing, unemployment was 25 percent in the States in 1933.) Could it be an analog to Japan’s “Lost Decade” from 1991-2001?

But like all things economic, we won’t know for sure what it was until after the fact. What a gig the practitioners of the ‘dismal science’ enjoy.

Which reminds me of a joke:

A woman hears from her doctor that she has only half a year to live. The doctor advises her to marry an economist and to live in North Dakota. The woman asks:
“will this cure my illness?” The doctor replies: “No, but the half year will seem pretty long.”

Already, leading indicators suggest that cause marketing, social marketing, and corporate philanthropy are in decline.

• A September study from Duke University finds chief marketing officers paying less attention to campaigns that “promote benefits to society.”
• Small businesses are enthusiastic about corporate philanthropy, but nonetheless giving less.
• Starting in 2007, all charitable giving in the United States, including corporate giving, did not keep pace with inflation, although it did increase in terms of actual dollars.

But, Giving USA also finds that since 1969, giving has risen every year in the United States except 1987, which featured an odd blip in the tax laws.

What are cause marketers to do in this confusing economic climate? After all, cause marketing… which was invented (more or less) in 1983… has never been through a recession or a sustained downturn. We have no history to guide us.

Absent any historical guidance, I humbly offer five thoughts:

1. I still find persuasive the all-but-real-life findings from the Duke/Cone behavioral study that demonstrate that cause marketing works to increase sales.
2. More than ever it’s clear that the matches between causes and companies have to be explicitly clear. In this economy, it’s unrealistic to expect customers to make any leaps of logic between a company, a campaign, and a cause.
3. Likewise, I think transparency about how donations are determined in a cause marketing campaign, and how the donated money is used, is more vital than ever.
4. To be cost-effective, cause marketing must rely more on PR, social media, and word-of-mouth/guerilla marketing.
5. Get your mopey chin off your chest. Many great fortunes are made in bad economic times.