Cause Marketing with Braille Marks

In a campaign reminiscent of the U.S. Post Office’s semipostal stamp campaign for the benefit of cancer research, the U.S. Mint is doing a cause campaign honoring Louis Braille and benefiting the National Federation for the Blind.

Starting last Thursday, March 26, you can purchase specially minted coins bearing the likeness of Frenchman Louis Braille and in memory of his bicentennial. Only 400,000 coins will be minted and they can not be ordered after Dec. 31, 2009. In addition to being minted in a limited quantity, the coins will be the first ever from the U.S. Mint to feature readable Braille on them.

The NFB anticipates raising as much as $8 million for the campaign, which will be used be used to advance Braille education for the blind in the following ways:

• Increase access to Braille instruction and reading materials
• Expand Braille mentoring, reading-readiness and outreach programs
• Require national certification in literary Braille among all special education teachers
• Advance the use of Braille in current and emerging technologies
• Research new methods of teaching and learning Braille
• Enact legislation in all 50 states requiring special education teachers of blind children to obtain and maintain the National Certification in Literary Braille by 2015.
• Make Braille resources more available through online sharing of materials, enhanced production methods, and improved distribution.
  

If you’re anything like me, you have been unaware that there is a crisis of Braille education among the blind of America. There’s a lot of reasons for the Braille crisis, but the upshot is this, among the 1.3 million blind Americans:

• 90 percent are Braille illiterate
• Braille illiteracy is a major reason why there’s a 70 percent (!) unemployment rate among the blind
• About 70,000 Americans go blind each year, most of whom are also Braille illiterate.

All of this left me with a few questions, which I put to Chris Danielsen, the Director of Public Relations at the NFB

The figures sited in the press materials with respect to Braille illiteracy among the blind are shocking. To this outsider, it seems like Braille literacy went from being considered an absolute necessity for the blind to being ignored and neglected in not much longer than a generation. How did that happen?

Fifty years ago, most blind people who received an education at all attended residential schools for the blind, where they were taught Braille as a matter of course. As blind children began to be mainstreamed into public schools, however, a number of factors contributed to Braille's decline. Braille teachers had to travel within and between school districts to work with several children, so the amount of Braille instruction each child received decreased. Some school districts found it easier to teach children who had some residual vision to read print, thereby, they thought, eliminating the need to hire a Braille teacher. Because the number of schools needing Braille materials for Braille readers increased since blind children were scattered among thousands of school districts rather than concentrated in schools for the blind, it became more difficult and time-consuming to produce more Braille textbooks and other learning materials. Finally, the advent of technologies like tape recorders and talking computers convinced some, falsely, that Braille was no longer necessary. These are just a few of the factors that have contributed to Braille's decline.

You have a game plan to encourage and enable the blind to acquire Braille literacy. What can make Braille literacy ‘cool’ again?

Braille needs to be introduced to blind children as early as possible—at the same time reading is normally introduced to sighted children—so that they quickly associate Braille with reading and come to believe that reading is a fun activity. In other words, blind children can be encouraged to read Braille in the same way that other children are encouraged to read—by early introduction and activities with parents and teachers that make reading interesting and fun. There are books with both Braille and print that parents can read with their children, and the Braille Reading Pals program of the National Federation of the Blind is an early literacy program designed for beginning readers and their parents that uses fun activities and games to help children develop positive associations about reading Braille. The National Federation of the Blind also has a curriculum for elementary schools, called “Braille Is Beautiful,” to teach sighted children about Braille so that they understand this fascinating code and how it helps blind people read.

This campaign reminds me of the breast cancer stamp campaign that the U.S. Post Office has conducted for about a decade now. That campaign has raised tens of millions of dollars for breast cancer research. Any chance that this campaign could continue with other coins in the years to come?

The National Federation of the Blind is interested in other opportunities to make the public aware of and increase Braille literacy. The Louis Braille bicentennial silver dollar was authorized by an act of Congress, as all U.S. Mint commemorative coins must be; there may be other quicker and more effective ways to continue to bring Braille literacy to the public’s attention. However, we will explore all options in ensuring our message reaches the public.

It's fair to say that most of my readers are sighted. Aside from buying these coins, what can we do for the blind?

Please visit www.nfb.org to find out about the state and local organizations of blind people in your area; you can help your local chapter and state affiliate of the NFB in a number of ways such as doing volunteer work, attending conventions, helping with fund-raising, and more. Keep an eye on the NFB Web site for events on the local and national level in which you can participate. Visit www.braille.org and sign up for our newsletter so you can keep up with what’s happening in our national Braille literacy campaign. Join our March for Independence, which takes place this summer in Detroit as part of our national convention, to help us raise funds to improve the lives of blind people across the nation. If you can’t be in Detroit, you can still become a “virtual marcher” and help us raise funds.

Additionally, you can show your support for the Reading Rights Coalition, which represents people who cannot read print. The Coalition will protest the threatened removal of the text-to-speech function from e-books for the Amazon Kindle 2 outside the Authors Guild headquarters in New York City, at 31 East 32nd Street on April 7, 2009, from noon to 2:00 p.m. More info on this can be found here.

Tip of the hat to causemarketing Googlegroup member Monica G. for setting up the interview with Chris Danielsen.

Fisher-Price Wildlife Conservation Society Cause Marketing

Research and experience clearly demonstrate that one of the greatest determinants of success in a cause marketing campaign is the fit between the cause and sponsor.

But what does ‘fit’ mean?

If you’re a book publisher can you only work with literacy charities? If you make food, can you only partner with hunger charities? If you sell computers can you only work with schools?

And what if you make Twitter apps but want to conduct cause marketing, who do you partner with?

These and other questions came to me when I say this campaign from Fisher-Price benefiting the Wildlife Conservation Society, which I saw advertised in the Jan 2009 issue of Parenting magazine. Infant and baby toymaker Fisher-Price… started in 1930 in the fore-throes of the Great Depression, by the way…has been owned by Mattel since 1997.

Fisher-Price offers a whole collection of wild animal-themed baby and infant toys it calls Precious Planet. This isn’t transactional cause marketing. Rather Fisher-Price will make a donation to Wildlife Conservation Society of $250,000 regardless of how well the Precious Planet line sells.

Here’s how Fisher-Price substantiates its choice to partner with the Wildlife Conservation Society, a conservation and education nonprofit with a 114-year tie to the Bronx Zoo in New York.

“Children have a natural affinity for animals. We nurture this connection from their earliest days, giving them stuffed animal friends to hug and cuddle and introducing our pets to our children as members of the family. We read picture books about animals to our babies, and we teach our toddlers to identify them and the sounds they make. As our children grow, we take them out into nature and to places like farms and zoos where they can see many different types of creatures in real life.

”But the most important thing we can teach our children about animals is that we need to be good friends to them – responsible caretakers of the environments we share, so animals all over the world can be healthy and thrive.”

Using such broadly-stroked language almost any company could choose a charity partner with an environmental or conservationist mission, even that Twitter app company.

But do you buy it? Is the fit between Fisher-Price and the Wildlife Conservation Society valid?

I hope you’ll comment below.

Cause Marketing for Good Bunnies

In the States it’s common to see promotions centered around various holidays; Father’s Day, St. Patrick’s, Halloween, the Super Bowl, etc.

According to National Retail Federation, the biggest holidays for retail sales are: the winter holidays (i.e.Christmas/Thanksgiving) by a country mile, back to school, Mother’s Day, Valentine’s Day, followed closely by Easter.

Even though Easter falls three weeks later in 2009 than 2008… thereby allowing retailers to gear-up… Easter sales are projected to be off 14 percent as Americans economize during the recession.

So what to do if your company's annual sales rely heavily on sales during the Easter holiday?

Lindt, the Swiss chocolatier has partnered with Autism Speaks, an advocacy group, in a cute if slightly miserly cause marketing campaign.

When you buy a Lindt chocolate golden bunny between March 12 and April 12, Lindt will donate $0.10 cents to Autism Speaks, up to $100,000. You can also buy toy bunny ears, also benefiting Autism Speaks, for $3 at a microsite promoting the campaign.

Full retail on a 200-gram (7 ounce) gold bunny is $7, although you can probably find it cheaper. Still a $0.10 cent donation for even a $5 purchase seems too little both as a donation and a motivator to purchase.

Remember, research clearly suggests that larger donation amounts improve sales.

Kudos to Lindt for giving Autism Speaks good exposure on the microsite.

It’s not clear whether Autism Speaks didn’t feel like they had the negotiation or brand strength to ask for more, or if Lindt just flat out wouldn’t give a greater donation per bunny. But should they renew next year the donation should be closer to $0.25 or even $0.50 cents.

Environmental Cause Marketing in Six Words

More cause marketing in six words, this time from Kelly Stettner at the environmental charity Black River Action Team in Vermont.

I am having way too much fun trying to do this...it’s like haiku -- distilling my message into concentrated nuggets that really sing! So far, this is my favorite:

'Discover, play, donate. It’s your river.'



Black River Action Team (BRAT)
45 Coolidge Road
Springfield, VT 05156
blackrivercleanup@yahoo.com
http://www.blackriveractionteam.org

~Making ripples on the Black River since 2000! ~

Seven Tips for Businesses… Large and Small… When Employing the Techniques of Cause Marketing

Faithful readers:

Waiting for your computer to return from the shop after a motherboard-ectomy is a little like waiting at the hospital for a baby to come…it can’t get here soon enough! But the computer doctors are telling me no later than Saturday!

In the meantime, I’m reprinting a column I wrote for the Salt Lake Enterprise, the local weekly business newspaper, and which was published Monday, March 16, 2009.


The headlines tell the story in brief:

• “American Red Cross running low on corporate donations” –ABC4, Feb. 16, 2009
• “Donations way down at charitable organizations” –KSL, Nov. 23, 2008
• “Big players scale back charitable donations” –Wall Street Journal, Nov. 25, 2008
• “Donations down; need up” –The Intelligencer, Nov. 30, 2008

The recession has been a perfect storm for nonprofits, battering them with great service needs at a time when donations are markedly lower.

And corporate donations, which most years range from 4-6 percent of the total U.S. charitable giving according to Giving USA, are a key slice of the pie for charities.

An opinion survey, published October 2008, of 1,033 small businesses conducted for the Chronicle of Philanthropy and underwritten by Advanta, found them enthusiastic for corporate giving, but economizing during the recession. No surprise there, of course. Businesses small and large are acutely affected by the recession, too.

What are business to do that understand the need and have a charitable impulse, but aren’t in a position to give much during these rocky times?

I routinely suggest clients consider cause marketing, which I define as “a relationship that bridges commerce and cause in ways that benefit both parties.”

Locally, Rocky Mountain Power has offered a $25 donation to Hogle Zoo when customers sign up for the Cool Keeper program. During the holidays, Jiffy Lube locations in Utah support the Utah Food Bank, offering discounted pricing to customers who bring donations of food items.

Cause marketing has been shown to boost sales, improve brand and increases customer loyalty. It can help a company stand out from competitors and enhance employee recruiting and retention. And it does several and sometimes all these things while helping a cause, even in a recession.

Cause marketing is a little like dark chocolate. It tastes good and it’s loaded with antioxidants, too.

A good deal of the success of cause marketing depends on the alignment between the company and the cause.

Paul Godfrey, a professor of strategy at the Marriott School of Business at Brigham Young University, compares corporate philanthropy… and, by extension, cause marketing… to an insurance policy. Godfrey has shown that the better a company’s philanthropic activities line up with values of the company’s stakeholders, the more highly the stakeholder group esteems your company.

Here then are seven tips to make good use of cause marketing in a way that benefits your company and the cause.

Pick an appropriate cause. Consider not only a cause’s appeal, but is capacity to support your effort. It may be that the best cause marketing fit for your business is a small charity.

Weigh the option of weaving cause marketing into your overall business strategy. General Mills’ Boxtops for Education campaign, which benefits tens of thousands of local schools nationwide, has gone on year-round for a dozen years. It’s a key part of their business model. Galactic Pizza in Minneapolis donates a portion of the proceeds from one of their pizzas to the local food bank. The promotion is printed right there on their menu.

Don’t ‘causewash.’ We all know what ‘greenwashing’ is. That’s when false or overstated claims are about the greenness of a product, service or company. Well you can causewash, too. But don’t do it. Your customers are savvy. And if they begin to distrust your intentions or the authenticity of your cause marketing, it will backfire on you.

Consider doing cause marketing for a small business in the developing world. You know what it’s like to finance a the startup or ongoing operations of your business. So too do millions of existing or budding entrepreneurs in the developing world. With an outfit like kiva.org or another microenterprise lender, your business and your customers would pick fellow entrepreneur(s) to support in the developing world and then follow their results.

Use the principles of world of mouth marketing. Make your cause marketing offer so compelling that people can’t help but talk about it. When you buy a pair of TOMS Shoes, the company gives away another pair to a child in the developing world. TOMS Shoes does precious little advertising. They don’t have to. Their word of mouth has been so good they’ve gotten exposure they couldn’t have purchased.

Give your cause marketing campaign a fitting amount of support. You don’t necessarily have to spend lots of money promoting your campaign. But you don have to support it with time and/or money.

Let’s say you own a fly-fishing shop and you’re offering $5 to Trout Unlimited when a customer buts $100 or more worth of gear. You could post that on your blog, website of Facebook page, put up a sign in front of the cash register, send out a press release. Remember that one of the greatest benefits of cause marketing is that it your business a new story to tell to customers, potential customers and the press. Take advantage of that.

Proceed cautiously if your business doesn’t face the consumer. The research is clear. Companies that advertise benefit the most from cause marketing. Now there is such a thing as B2B cause marketing that can benefit your B2B business. But to pull that off you probably need some help from a specialist.

The Computer is in The Shop Edition of the Cause Marketing Blog

Faithful Readers:

My main computer is in the shop and I’m scrambling a little more than usual.

I saw a news item today from the Associated Press that showed that store brands are showing a meaningful and bottom-line important uptick in sales.

Key sentence…

"Kroger said 27 percent of its sales in its most recent quarter came from its
own brands and fueled most of the company’s overall grocery volume growth for
the year — a trend it expects to continue."

So in honor of my computer I’m going to repost something on cause marketing and private label brands that originally appeared on November 11, 2008.

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.

More Cause Marketing in Six Words

Tuesday’s post/exercise Cause Marketing Summarized in Six Words has already drawn a response from Time To Talk, the cause campaign from the Partnership for a Drug-Free America.

Faithful reader Debbie Kellogg writes:

Hi Paul,

This was a fun exercise! I got several folks here at the Partnership for a Drug-Free America to help brainstorm six words for our cause campaign, Time To Talk (www.timetotalk.org).

It is a surprise to many parents that they are the most powerful influence in a child’s life – greater than their peers, celebrities, musicians and event athletes. The
Partnership’s research shows that kids who consistently learn about the risks of
drugs from their parents are up to 50% less likely to use than those who do not.
Our cause platform, Time To Talk, encourages parents to talk to their kids by
providing helpful tools, tips and resources not only to start but to also
continue the conversation over the long haul.

Here is our
submission:

Time To Talk

You talk. Teens listen. Drug-free families.

Best regards,
Debbie Kellogg
Director, Corporate Relations & Alliances
The Partnership for a Drug-Free America

Submit your six-word cause marketing campaign summary and I’ll post it, too.

Cause Marketing Summarized in Six Words

Author and venture capitalist Guy Kawasaki famously has his 10/20/30 Rule of Powerpoint. It goes like this: When you’re making a pitch, your Powerpoint should have no more than 10 slides, take less than 20 minutes to present, and no font should be smaller than 30 points.

In homage to Kawasaki, I’m going to suggest that you be able to sum up your cause marketing campaign in just six words.

Why six words? It’s enough to do the job, but not enough to obfuscate.

Here’s proof.

Last year this time Rachel Ferschleiser and Larry Smith released their book Not Quite What I was Planning: Six-Word Memoirs by Writers Famous and Obscure. They lead with a tale about Ernest Hemingway who was once challenged to write a book in six words. He responded: “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.”

There’s an awful lot of pathos in those six words. But then we’re talking about Papa Hemingway (seen above), a literary legend who specialized in compact fiction.

Ferschleiser and Smith published many more of these evocative and diminutive tales following a contest on Twitter.

Here’s a select few:

“Danced in fields of infinite possibilities.”

Deepak Chopra

 

“Brought it to a boil, often.”

Mario Batali

 

And, two personal favorites…

 

“Found true love after nine months.”

Jody Smith

 

“Wasn’t born a redhead; fixed that.”

Andie Grace

Here’s my challenge to you cause marketers: develop a description of your campaign that comprises six words [or less!]. You’ll find the discipline imposed by just six words will bring not only brevity, but clarity. 

I’m not talking about writing a headline here. Headlines are meant to tease you into the text that follows. Six-word stories tell complete truth.

Here’s my version for Yoplait’s lid campaign for Susan G. Komen for the Cure:

“Lick Yoplait lid. Send in. Gloat.”

Or for (RED).

“Help stop HIV. Buy like Bono.”

What about you? Do you have a six-word story that describes your cause marketing efforts?

Comment below or email me at aldenkeene @ gmail . com.

The Cause Marketing Blog, Now With Bright Orange Packaging!

Remember your marketing class in college when the professor would show examples of consumer packaged goods that would tout ‘all new packaging!’ as though it were a genuine benefit?

Well, over the last week or so the cause marketing blog has gone through a number of changes, courtesy of Charissa Wilson at Triple Latte Design. And while the colors are all-new, I think the improvements to the blog are more than skin-deep.

First off, the blog is in a three-column design, which I think is easier on the eyes. Alden Keene’s definition of cause marketing is right up in the masthead, where you also see a bridge; a graphical representation of cause marketing.

In the second column my contact information is front and center and we’ve added a RSS feed that finds and displays news and information with keywords like ‘cause marketing, ‘corporate social responsibility’ and ‘cause related marketing.’

At the top of the third column, on the far right side, is a feed of images of cause marketing campaigns. Over the years I’ve collected thousands of examples of cause marketing and now, with these changes in the blog, I’m going to share these campaigns with you my faithful readers. There’s 21 images there now and as I add more, I promise that I won’t repeat anything I’ve already posted on. You can get a close up of any of the images by clicking on it.

Whaddya say? We live in a world of useful (and free!) widgets that can do some wonderful things. Am I missing any tricks here?

Please comment below with suggestions.

Oh, and Home Depot, ING, MCI (now a part of Verizon and, strictly speaking, no longer orange) and other companies that use orange in their logo, feel free to contact me about sponsoring the blog. I’ve got some bills to pay.  And we won't have to futz with the colors. 8~)

Paul Jones of Alden Keene on Cause Marketing in Utah CEO Magazine

Hi Gang:

I was quoted at length in the current issue of Utah CEO Magazine on the topic of cause marketing in the story called Capitalists for Change.

Double kudos to the reporter Geoff Griffin, the writer. I must have given the poor devil 100 pages of reports, surveys and the like to sort through.   

You have to register to read the full article, but registration is free.

~Paul~

Cause Marketing Grab Bag

Assorted miscellanea today from the intersection of causes and commerce, marketing and business.

• Out today Trendwatching.com’s Eco Bounty report. Because trendwatching.com casts such a broad net, I find it must reading when I need to inspire my own ideas and thinking.
  
• 
  
• Also released today were the results of the third annual Nonprofit Employment Trends Survey which finds that 26 percent of the nonprofits surveyed expect to cut staff in 2009. Here’s a shocking thought; laid off nonprofit employees on the other side of the breadline.
• Adult contemporary/ jazz musician Anders Holst has a new charity single out called All About Soul. During March all proceeds for the sales of the single will benefit the New York affiliate of Susan G. Komen for the Cure. 
• Along a similar vein, a host of Brazilian musicians have put out a compilation called Dark Was the Night benefiting the Red Hot Organization, a HIV/AIDS charity.
  
• Huggable American Idol runner-up David Archuleta is fronting an effort from Build-A-Bear Workshop called Love. Hugs. Peace., and meant to inspire kids to improve their world. Archuleta sings a song called Let’s Talk About Love, which you can download from the website (through tomorrow) for $1. Other artists will record the song over time. The money goes to Save the Children. 
  
• Finally, if you find yourself in need of some knowledgeable help with trademarks, I can recommend writer, instructor and trademark and brand doyenne Linda Tancs. We often think of patents as the only real intellectual property. But for many companies and causes their trademarks are the most important elements in their portfolio of intellectual property. And, if properly maintained, they never expire—unlike a patent. 
  

MBA Student Headed for P&G in June Offers Her Services Until Then

Kind Readers:

A few months back I had an extended conversation about cause marketing with Supreet Kaur, then an MBA student at India’s prestigious Management Development Institute in Gurgaon.

Well Supreet has finished her studies and is headed toward a marketing position at Proctor & Gamble in June. She offered her services to my company... Alden Keene... but I can’t use them in that time frame.  

Instead, I can endorse Supreet’s marketing skills, preparation and passion for cause marketing. For the right agency, nonprofit or company, Supreet would be a wonderful addition until she joins Proctor & Gamble in June. 

Contact her directly at supreet.86 @ gmail. com. If you’d like a copy of her resume, you can contact her or me.