Non Breast Cancer Cause Marketing in October

Clients ask me all the time: have the breast cancer charities sucked out all the oxygen out of the atmosphere for cause marketing during October? That is, can anyone else do cause marketing during National Breast Cancer Awareness Month?

I can't give a categorical answer, but here are three quick takes on cause marketing campaigns going on in this month that aren’t about breast cancer, plus a forth that is about breast cancer, only with fewer pink ribbons than usual.

Sigg Drop of Hope Water Bottle for the Jane Goodall Institute. When you buy the Drop of Hope water bottle from Sigg, the Swiss aluminum bottle makers, they’ll donate $5 to the Jane Goodall Institute to build rainwater tanks for schoolchildren in Africa. The campaign is well-timed coming, as it does the heels of news that Sigg used BPA as an element in the plastic liner of its water bottles after first denying doing so.

Benihana/Fuji Water Co-Promotion for Best Buddies. Last night at dinner with the fam at Benihana I saw a small sign that said when you ordered Fuji Water with your meal, an unstated donation would be made to Best Buddies. I can’t find anything online about it, although Benihana has supported Best Buddies in the past with a change round-up effort.

Weight Watchers “Lose for Good.” Weight Watchers is repeating its successful “Lose for Good” campaign. When Weight Watcher members and subscribers loose weight during a defined period of time from September thorough mid-October, the company donates money to Share Our Strength and Action Against Hunger and encourages members to donate food to local food banks. In 2008 members shed 4 million pounds, donated 1.5 million pounds of food and Weight Watchers donated $1 million.

Sharpie Breast Cancer Campaign for City of Hope. Sharpie, the permanent marker brand line from Newell Rubbermaid, is supporting the City of Hope with pen sales and an e-Bay art auction from prominent designers including Rachel Roy, Betsey Johnson, Tracy Reese, Donna Karan, and others. Sharpie markets actively to the artistic and DIY crowd, encouraging them to post work they’ve done using Sharpies on the Sharpie Uncapped website. Given that, it would be cool if Sharpie had figured out a way to integrate their community of users more completely in the City of Hope campaign.

Injecting Emotion into Your Cause Marketing

Successful cause marketing appeals not only to your head, but to your heart as well.

The head part comes easier for me and probably for many of you as well. So how do you inject heart into a cause marketing campaign?

Ulta’s answer is to ask people to write their breast cancer stories in a letter and then post them in the front windows of their stores.

They call it 'Windows of Love.'

Ulta supports The Breast Cancer Research Foundation.

Ulta is the largest discount cosmetics and fragrance retailer in the United States with more than 330 stores in some 38 States.

There’s an Ulta store that I can almost coast down to from my house, so I went down there to check it out.

The store devoted the better part of three of its four windows to the promotion. One of the window displays explained the promotion and the other two contained actual letters.

The letters were unformatted. That is, so near as I could tell they were posted exactly as they were submitted. The challenge was that some of the letters appeared to be multi-page and it was sometimes tricky figuring out where some of the letters started and ended.

Some letters contained names, some did not. In my cursory look I didn’t see any place information like city and State. Some of the letters appeared to have been seeded by Ulta employees. Some of the letters were about the person who had written the letter and some were about someone they knew and loved. But there were no pictures.

That last one is a big problem in my opinion.

Nothing helps me connect with someone emotionally like the ability to see the person who’s telling me their story. I know that there are privacy challenges, but I don’t think they’re insurmountable.

And imagine how much more personally affecting the window display would have been if the people in the window not only included their picture, but were, in fact, from my area or at least my own State.

Finally, when you look at the display from the sidewalk it’s just one big patch of gray. While color photos of the letter writers would help in this regard too, the letters themselves need to be on colored paper at least.

And wouldn’t it be cool if the letters, when looked upon from afar, painted an image of the iconic pink ribbon that symbolizes breast cancer?

GlaxoSmithKline Throws John McEnroe Under the Bus

It has been my pleasure (and, occasionally, my displeasure) to work with celebrities in cause campaigns over the years.

• Shannon Miller, the most decorated US female gymnast ever, told me scary stalker stories on a long drive together on the Gulf Coast of Alabama.
• Baseball Hall of Famer Reggie Jackson was not quite lucid the night I escorted him through a charity cocktail party.
• I once put $5,000 on my credit card to pay for a dinner for 15 sponsor reps, Grammy-winner Amy Grant, and me.
• I walked into Kenny Loggins’ dressing room one time when he had his hair up in curlers.
• One night when I was sitting with actor-singer John Schneider he held forth (at length!) on the topic of females calling themselves ‘actresses’ rather than ‘actors.’

In short, I’ve had a certain amount of experience with celebrities, especially the lower wattage variety. Which is why I’m a little surprised by the way the pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline threw John McEnroe under the bus with this ad that appeared in Town & Country magazine in support of several prostate cancer charities.

Down there at the bottom of the page it reads: “GlaxoSmithKline funded and helped develop this campaign, including providing compensation to Mr. McEnroe.”

Let me be clear:

It doesn’t give me much heartburn that John McEnroe making money off of his participation. Would it be preferable if the tennis great was volunteering? Of course. But if McEnroe can give prostate cancer the lift in visibility that it needs, then it’s money well-spent.

Moreover, if McEnroe is going to require compensation, then GlaxoSmithKline should be the entity paying him.

And I think my posts over the last three years demonstrate my commitment to transparency in cause marketing.

But putting that disclosure at the bottom of the ad, to me, disrespects John McEnroe.

Think about it this way: Suppose you work for a charity. That is, you provide some professional service and in return you receive pay from the charity. How would you feel if the cause issued periodic ads that featured your photo with the disclosure you got paid for your work for the cause?

Like all analogies, this one’s imperfect: you're probably not getting paid for your celebrity. But if you’re like me, you’d probably feel slighted by that disclosure, never mind that it’s true.

So how does GlaxoSmithKline be transparent without disrespecting John McEnroe?

1. When they issued the press release, bring it up then.
2. If there’s FAQs on the website, note that McEnroe is being paid.
3. If a member of the public or the press ever asks about McEnroe’s compensation openly and directly answer the question.

But don’t put it in the ads!