The Donation Amount in Transactional Cause Marketing

One question I am frequently asked is: "just what is the best amount to set the donation at in transactional cause marketing?" What percentage should the donation be in cause marketing?

As a rule of thumb, academic studies have found that more is more when it comes to setting the amount. That is, the greater the donation the better the sales boost. But that’s not terribly helpful in this age when every Baby Boomer knows the exact number of his good and bad cholesterol.readings. People want a tidy little percentage.

But that’s fraught with problems for some sponsors. If you set the number very high, doesn’t that suggest that your prices are too lofty?

For LavishGiving.com, an online gift store, that number is 10 percent. When you make purchases totaling $100 or more, after 7 days LavishGiving.com will send 10 percent of the total to you as a gift card from Networkforgood.org, which you can then donate to the your charity of choice. The time lag is to allow for returns.

LavishGiving.com was founded by Jane Pennels (seen above), a cancer survivor, who started LavisihGiving.com as a retailer with a mission.

“Back on my feet with an ‘all clear’ test result,” she reports on her website, “the entrepreneurial bug bit me again. But this time, I was determined to create a retail business through which I could give back to some of the organizations that have touched my life so profoundly… My assignment was clear: create a business that gives customers an effortless way to make substantial donations to their favorite causes, while shopping for the things they want to buy anyway. It's a win-win. A no-brainer.”

That’s fine for her, you say, Ms. Pennels has skin in the game. Moreover she seems to be a ‘lifestyle entrepreneur.’ How much should the donation be for my company and my product?

Good question. Contact me and let’s talk.

I Am The World’s (Second) Most Interesting Man…

…which explains why the World Food Programme changed their ad campaign to include color images.

In June 2008 I flayed the World Food Programme’s ad that depicted Drew Barrymore feeding hungry African kids. The photograph was in black and white save only a small red cup.

Here’s what I wrote then:

I can see it now. In the wake of a string of natural disasters and skyrocketing food prices in the Developing World, management at UN World Food Programme (WFP) decide to commence some serious marketing. So they start taking meetings with fancy ad agencies.

Here’s how the successful meeting went:

The senior manager at the agency turned on the charm and created a ‘reality distortion field’ before turning the time over to the creative director, who immediately started to weave a persuasive narrative. “We’ll put actresses like Rachel Weisz and Drew Barrymore in PSAs, in print ads and on Oprah. Imagine stark, beautifully-shot images of Drew feeding darling doe-eyed kids in Kenya in haunting black and white. The images will underscore that issue of hunger in the Developing World is black and white…”

At that point the UN World Food Programme managers should have kicked that agency to the curb.

Unless your cause is the Ansel Adams Black and White Photo Preservation Trust (I just made that up, by the way) your fundraising and cause-related marketing images better be in color. In every test of preferences (outside of the canyons of Manhattan), people say they want to see color images.

It could be that in creative meetings they determined that B&W images would deemphasizeDrew Barrymore in that ad. But of course, in so doing they deemphasized the children as well. It was a marketing conceit to use on the red cup in other words as the only color image in the campaign, just as the World's Most Interesting Man campaign from Dos Equis is a marketing conceit.

But if any organization needs authenticity it is the World Food Programme, the U.N.'s first responder in most disaster relief efforts.

I can only conclude that as the World’s (Second) Most Interesting Man my posting compelled the World Food Programme and its agency to change this element of their creative approach.

How do I know that I am the World’s (Second) Most Interesting Man?

• Hairs trimmed from my beard have been woven into rope that spans the Colorado River at vital crossings in the Grand Canyon.
  
• Tears from my eyes are frequently used as a topical analgesic for children with severe combined immunodeficiency (SCID).
  
• Posters of my smile, displayed in the stalls of the last three Kentucky Derby winners, are hailed for bringing victory.

[BTW, look at Sean Penn’s forehead and neck in the ad above. Penn is about six months older than I am. But does the World’s (Second) Most Interesting Man have turkey neck? No, I do not.]

Kelly Ripa is Atop the Celebrity Cause Marketing Heap

You can’t swing a corded mouse online without running into the daytime double-threat actress/talk show host Kelly Ripa and her work on behalf of the Ovarian Cancer Research Fund.

I get, it seems like, weekly email notices from Electrolux telling me to visit the ‘Lemonade Stands,’ of OCRF supporters. The Lemonade Stands are the charity part of a broader Kelly Ripa-powered promotion for Electrolux curiously called ‘Kelly Confidential.’

The Stands represent an intriguing variation on virtual paper icons for MDA that I’ve profiled before. To support the stands you’re asked to donate amounts from $1 (the default) to $50. The donations are processed through Paypal.

When you open a stand, Electrolux will donate the first $1. There's also a win a refrigerator contest element when you open a stand. Electrolux will donate up to a total maximum of $15,000 for the lemonade campaign. That is, just the first 15,000 stands get the $1 donation. Electrolux’s total pledge to OCRF is $500,000.

The campaign is also heavily promoted on Facebook and Twitter. So had I ever friended the campaign in either of those social media outlets, no doubt I‘d be seeing little ads for the Lemonade Stands there, too.

The bright and appealing Ripa can also be seen with her husband and former daytime TV costar Mark Consuelos on Super Saturday Live on QVC, August 1, 2009. A portion of the sales that day benefit the OCRF.

While there is plenty of celebrity cause marketing around, in fairly quick order Kelly Ripa has ascended to the top of the heap. No doubt the Ovarian Cancer Research Fund is glad of that.

Batting Your Eyelashes at Prescription Drug Cause Marketing

I’m a little chary about making sweeping pronouncements, but I believe I've just seen the first cause marketing promotion in the U.S. involving a prescription drug.

The drug is from Allergan and it’s called Latisse, “the first and only FDA-approved prescription treatment for inadequate or not enough eyelashes.” The medical name for this condition is hypotrichosis.

Latisse is lifestyle drug the way Viagra or Propecia are. That is, no one’s going to die (except, perhaps, of embarrassment) if their erectile dysfunction or male pattern baldness or thin eyelashes go untreated.

Which means the positioning for a product like Latisse is a little tricky. Allergan could have gone with the sexy route as with Viagra or Cialis and showed lovely women batting their new longer, thicker, darker eyelashes. But I’ll bet that approach didn’t test well with women.

(I’m reminded of a joke about the Cialis ads from a comedian whose name I can’t recall. He said, “Hey if my erection lasts longer than 3 hours I’m not calling my doctor, I’m calling every one of my friends!”)

Instead Allergan plays it pretty straight with Latisse. But by itself that’s not very sexy. So Allergan brought in actress/model Brooke Shields, who…um… suffers from hypotrichosis, as the face of Latisse.

Allergan, which also makes Botox, took it a step further and added a cause marketing element in support of the Make-A-Wish Foundation. This is not transactional cause marketing, which has the potential to run afoul of the FDA.

Instead, Allergan made a $500,000 donation to Make-A-Wish and offers an additional $5 to the charity for each person who signs for Latisse LashPerks. Allergan’s total potential donation is capped at $1 million and the sign-up period ends Dec. 31, 2009.

LashPerks is a loyalty program. Since Latisse is prescribed by medical doctors, LashPerks is way for Allergan to maintain an unmediated relationship with Latisse users.

A 30-day supply of Latisse starts around $120 but, of course, your price may vary. And naturellement some doctors will require more frequent office visits than others.

I’m not sure what to make of this campaign. Make-A-Wish certainly has plenty of heart, but the strategic fit between Latisse and the charity isn’t clear to me. Women who are spending north of $1,400 a year for longer eyelashes might be dismissed simply as the vain. I don’t know this about Latisse’s audience, but my gut tells me that vain or not they probably are 'aspirational.' That is, I think maybe they would want to do something charitable in addition to seeing a charitable donation made to a charity like Make-A-Wish. It would be fun to test that premise.

The donation amount, $1 million, seems generous except when considered in context of the fact that Allergan is banking on Latisse being a $500 million a year product line.

All that said, I consider this a breakthrough campaign since...so far as I know... it’s the first cause marketing campaign on behalf of a prescription drug.

Pharmaceutical companies, take note.

Campbell's Rebrands Labels for Education

Following General Mills’ lead, Campbell’s Labels for Education is rebranding so as to be more appealing to would-be partners.

“The logo was very heavily Campbell-branded,” Mike Salzberg, president, Campbell Sales, told Brandweek. “We’ve never gone outside as far as sharing it or getting partners. But now we believe there is an opportunity for partnerships, starting with the one we formed with the Grammy Foundation.”

(The logo on the left is the old one. When I get the new one I'll share it).

With this new ‘open source cause marketing’ approach Campbell is doubling down in the bad economy. “In a troubled economy, being able to collect and win any free stuff in places where they’re taking things away [works],” says Salzberg.

Now in its 36th year, Labels for Education has generated more than $110 million in goods and supplies for the nation’s schools. About 75 percent of the nation’s schools participate in Labels for Education.

Campbell’s renewed effort underscores something I’ve written about before. For companies with a generous impulse but a smaller philanthropic budget now is the perfect time to expand (or try) cause marketing, especially transactional cause marketing.