Dove’s Cause Marketing of Self Esteem, Part I

I have rather self-conscientiously avoided reviewing any cause marketing for Dove’s Self Esteem Fund.

I had several ostensible reasons for avoiding it. The campaign has won all kinds of awards and the respect of its peers, so it didn’t need even the tiniest amount of attention I could bring it. And I found the marketing of it to be a little disjointed.

But the main reason was that I didn’t understand the intellectual basis for self-esteem, which struck me as dogmatic.

I’ve known plenty of people… women and men both, but probably more men than women… who seemed to esteem themselves very highly, but were absolute terrors to deal with. Often as not what they needed most, it seemed to me, was strong dose of humility.

A couple of things have changed.

First off, my daughters are getting older and as they mature it seems like society and culture grinds at girls in a way it didn’t me as a boy of their age.

Second, I have come to admire the work of Eric Hoffer, an autodidact who persuasively tackled the issue of self-esteem back in the 1940s and 1950s in a refreshingly anti-Freudian way.

Hoffer wrote this, for instance:

“The individual on his own is stable only so long as he is possessed of self-esteem. The maintenance of self-esteem is a continuous task which taxes all of the individual’s powers and inner resources. We have to prove our worth and justify our existence anew each day. When, for whatever reason, self-esteem is unattainable, the autonomous individual becomes a highly explosive entity. He turns away from an unpromising self and plunges into the pursuit of pride — the explosive substitute for self-esteem. All social disturbances and upheavals have their roots in crises of individual self-esteem, and the great endeavor in which the masses most readily unite is basically a search for pride.”

According to Hoffer, then, all the jerks you’ve every dealt with aren’t jerks because their self-esteem is too high, but because they’ve substituted pride for self-esteem. Humility isn’t the opposite of self esteem, pride is.

In my next post I’ll dissect Dove’s campaign itself.

Cause Marketing and National Television Advertising

It's rare to see national television ads for cause marketing.

But since January I count three:

1. Disney Parks' efforts to encourage volunteerism, utilizing the Muppets.
2. Outback Steakhouse's campaign for Operation Homefront.
3. American Express's ad with Yvon Chouinard on behalf of their Member's Project campaign.

Of the three, I appreciate Disney's ads (there are several versions) the most because they feature an emotion aside from earnestness.

But I'd love to get your feedback. So I've set up a poll in the column to the immediate right.

Please follow the links to view the ads and vote for the one you prefer.

The poll closes in a month.

Use Lemon Windex at Your Next Gala, Raise More Money?

Professors at Brigham Young University, Toronto University, and Northwestern University conducted a simple experiment and found that a room scented with Lemon Windex made test subjects more likely to volunteer for a charity and share more cash with partners in a trust-based exercise.

Read their paper here.

For charitable fundraisers I think it's worth your own test. And it wouldn't be terribly difficult.

If you do multiple similar events in a year, try one with the room scented with lemon and one unscented as a control and compare the results both in terms of dollars raised and volunteers recruited.

Or you could use last year's event as the control, although it wouldn't be as precise.

Likewise, event-based cause marketers could scent their events with lemon.

Lemony candles oughta do the trick.

Cause Marketing With Trade Groups

It’s not clear to me that this is a trend, but I’ve seen my first cause marketing campaign with a trade group.

The campaign is a tree planting effort from Odwalla, the juice company, and the trade group called the National Association of State Park Directors.

It launches in May.

In the United States, a trade group or trade association is a probably a nonprofit (although not necessarily a charity) with a mission to further the interests of a particular industry.

The United States has not only 58 magnificent National Parks (along with more than 300 other ‘units’ managed by the National Park Service)… but it is also home to another 6,000 park units, managed by the individual states.

(Among them the stunning Goblin Valley State Park, here in my home state of Utah).

The directors of those state park systems can join the National Association of State Park Directors.

Beginning in May, Brandweek reports, Odwalla will launch a promotion meant to plant $200,000 worth of trees in those state parks.

I have no special knowledge of this relationship, but I can make some educated guesses about how Odwalla has ended up supporting a trade group.

Odwalla probably wanted to do a tree planting effort, but didn’t want to narrow its appeal by concentrating solely on either the Arbor Day Foundation or the National Parks, more than 70 percent of which are concentrated in the Western half of the United States.

Or, it could be that the entry price for sponsorship at the National Park Foundation or the Arbor Day Foundation was too high.

Normally cause marketing with a trade group wouldn’t make sense because most are too inward facing. Most cause marketing faces the consumer.

But the National Association of State Park Directors does have an element that faces consumers; an informational and advocacy website called AmericasStateParks.com. They even offer branded merchandise there.

Like I said, it’s too soon to graph a trend line. But certain kinds of trade groups are now officially in play as potential cause marketing partners.

Cause Marketing 201

The 2010 Cone Nonprofit Marketing Trend Tracker has attracted a fair amount of attention, especially in the social media.

But almost none of the blog or Facebook posts, or Tweets got much beyond the headline in Cone's release, which reads: "More than Three-Quarters of Americans say a Nonprofit-Corporate Partnership Makes a Cause Stand Out."

This latest study confirms and... to a degree... builds on Cone's studies over the last 15-20 years. But it's Cause Marketing 101.

Cause Marketing 201 is a couple of paragraphs down in the body of the release. The Cone study also found that 75 percent of Americans "Want to hear about the results of corporate/nonprofit partnerships."

Few cause marketers, corporate or nonprofit, get this right. But it couldn't be more vital to giving successful cause marketing the transparency it requires.

People want to know that progress is being made. Cone's release says this means that people want to know about "the positive effect on the social issue, the money raised."

And that's true. But it only scratches the surface. People want to know if companies actually kept their pledges, and wrote the checks they promised. They want to know if the nonprofit actually built that playground, or helped that veteran's group. They want to sense that progress is being made.

And, fear not, they understand that intractable problems...like curing diseases or ending poverty in the developing world...require long-term approaches.

Part of the challenge of course is that the mainstream media won't often bite on a story that tells how a campaign did. The mainstream media requires novelty. And a story about a sponsor who kept their pledge or a nonprofit that effected some change probably doesn't meet that requirement.

No matter. You must still send out that press release to demonstrate transparency, to keep your company or nonprofit in front of editor's eyes, and to underscore that your firm or nonprofit has integrity.

Of course you can also buy media. If purchased media is already in your budget, be sure to carve out a piece of it for the follow-up efforts.

If your budget doesn't include purchased media, remember that we live in an era when any nonprofit or company can be its own media outlet. There should be a prominent place on your website or Facebook page that declares just what the campaign accomplished.

Shoot on your Flip-style camera and post on your website and Youtube some video of the meeting wherein the check is presented. Post pictures from your digital camera on your site and on Flickr of the events related to the campaign. Record and post a radio-style audio story on the who, what, when, where and why of the campaign. Put together a post-campaign Powerpoint and post it to Slideshare. Etc.

Emily Post famously said: "manners grease the wheels of social interaction."

In a like way, transparency greases the wheels for cause marketing effectiveness. Or, at least, that's what three-quarters of Americans say.

Death of a Cause Marketing Superstar

RIP Merlin Olsen

Merlin Olsen, a 14-time NFL Pro Bowl selection, actor and philanthropist died Thursday after a battle with mesothelioma. He was 69.

I knew Merlin through my years at the Children’s Miracle Network, with which he was intimately connected from its founding in 1983.

I'll leave it to others to memorialize his astonishing football career, or his careers as an actor and broadcaster. Instead I'll address Merlin as I knew him.

For many years it was my pleasure to put words into Merlin’s mouth.

It was a pleasure because in addition to all the other wonderful things people have said about him, Merlin was the consummate professional.

It was a point of pride with him that he could read any voiceover script you gave him and get a perfect read in one take. Usually he did.

I remember once that Merlin did the voiceover work for a particular ad. Circumstances were such that about 3 months passed by before we cut the ad together. In the meantime something had changed necessitating a change in a portion... but not the whole... script.

We brought him back into the studio and three months after his first read Merlin listened to the previous recording for a minute or two and then managed to match exactly his pitch of his voice and the pace and timing of his delivery. Few professionals can do that.

This from a guy whose first career was in football.

I remember another instance when I was writing the old Children’s Miracle Network Telethon. We shot it live in Disneyland’s old outdoor venue called Videopolis.

We had a story about a young boy who had survived a shooting by his father. The father had shot and killed the mother, then shot the boy, who survived, before the father fatally turned the gun on himself. It was a tough story that I used to talk about the epidemic of child abuse in the United States.

And for weeks leading up to the telethon the format called for Merlin to introduce the videotaped story. It had to be Merlin, I kept telling the producers, because only he could give it the gravity it required without making it grave.

At the last minute another telethon host... an actor... was substituted in Merlin’s place and sure enough that host massacred the read. At one point this other host looked off camera [at who it wasn’t clear] and said, while reading some dire statistics about child abuse, “I can’t believe this.”

Merlin would have aced that read.

We used cue cards at Videopolis because it was an outdoor venue and the Southern California sun was often too bright for Teleprompters. But we had two kinds of cue cards; cue cards for Merlin and cue cards for everyone else. Merlin was so exceedingly far-sighted that he required his cards in a tiny, tiny little script.

Children's Miracle Network has a photo in their archives of Merlin with a big smile on his face and a microphone in one hand looking grandfatherly at a little bald boy in his other arm. Merlin had humongous hands, so both the microphone and the child look tiny.

That's Merlin Olsen the philanthropist in one photo.

Merlin also spent many years on advisory boards at Children's Miracle Network. Usually celebrities on boards are there to smile and make jokes at the breaks. But Merlin was also exceptionally bright... he had a masters degree in economics. So with Merlin on your board you got the benefit of both his celebrity and his remarkable intelligence.

There’s a whole bunch of other stories I could tell. One involves Charles Barkley at Merlin’s home in Deer Valley, Utah. But that’s the kind of story you tell over dinner or drinks, not in a blog posting.

I’ll conclude with this. I remember hearing an anecdote about Wilt Chamberlain, the NBA superstar when he was at the Olympic Gamess after his playing days were over. This being the Olympics there were 7-foot (and taller) guys all over the place. But such was his legend and stature as a player that Wilt… who was 7 foot 1 inch… nonetheless seemed to dwarf even taller players.

Merlin was the same way. It wasn’t that Merlin diminished other people. Quite the opposite, in fact. It was just that in order to find someone to measure up to Merlin Olsen as a football player, a broadcaster and actor, a philanthropist, and a man, you’d have to invent that person.

In the real world there was only one Merlin Olsen.

Faithful readers.

Thursday's post on Scotties tissue (on the left is a recent free-standing insert [FSI]) has generated a fair amount of back-channel conversation.

The following comes from Jeff Atlas, one of the pioneers of cause marketing. I post his remarks with his permission.

Your recent post about Scotties led me to do a little bit of investigating.

I remember when Weyerhaeuser advertised itself as "The Tree Growing Company."

So, I wondered why they had dropped (or perhaps "felled") that name.

Here's the story from the ad/pr company that Weyerhaeuser used:

"Political turbulence on a number of issues surrounded Weyerhaeuser Company in the 1990's. Perceptions about clear cutting, log exports, old growth logging, the endangered spotted owl and stewardship of natural resources were conspiring to undercut the reputation of the industry in general and Weyerhaeuser in particular. There was a real danger that this situation could lead to new and costly government restrictions on how the company operated."

"Public opinion research conducted by Gogerty Marriott, revealed that the company's positioning as 'The Tree-Growing Company' was not helping shore up public support. Facts and data about the company's operations did not have a favorable impact and there was a real issue with credibility. Advertising, which then focused on the company's replanting programs and forest stewardship, had no impact on the public opinion."

So, it's interesting to note that J. D. Irving has now picked up - and trademarked - this slogan.

Perhaps they think that they will have better luck with it.

But does a slogan that falls in the forest make a sound?

Cause Marketing, Sans the Cause

Imagine that you're Nucor, the steel manufacturer that makes steel by recycling old steel, and you form a new relationship with Union Pacific to recycle its old track and replace it with newly reforged Nucor steel track.

Or, imagine that you 're a vertically-integrated chocolate company... like Mars... and you learn that cacao trees grow better under a canopy of taller trees. So you plant taller jungle trees over your cacao trees so that they yield more beans per tree.

If you were Nucor or Mars practicing that kind of forward 'environmental' thinking you'd probably want to crow about that wouldn't you?

[Cue the sarcastic smirk].

In effect, that's what tissue maker Irving Tissue, Inc., the maker of Scotties Tissue, is doing with its "Renewable Forest Project."

Running in ads (this one was in the March issue of More magazine) and Free-Standing Inserts (FSIs), Scotties says that it "will plant three seedlings in the spring and summer for very one tree used to produce Scotties products the previous year."

Now bear in mind that Irving Tissue... which is owned by the Canadian conglomerate J.D. Irving, LTD... is vertically-integrated. It's the only way to make money in the paper business. So Irving owns the timberland that it turns into Scotties as well as the machines that turn wood pulp into paper.

In short, they're replanting the trees that they cut down on their own plantations. That's a little like a farmer replanting wheat in the spring after the fall harvest.

But, what about planting three for every one they cut down?

I know nothing about modern forestry practices, but I'd be very surprised to learn that any timberland company plants only one tree for every one it cuts down.

Some seedlings won't make it. Some won't survive being transplanted into the timberland. Some will be hurt by bugs, or animals, or the weather. You get the picture.

So while this effort from Scotties seems like cause marketing or corporate social responsibility, all it really is just business.

Now I'm not one who thinks that there's something inherently wrong with commerce.

But I'm calling Scotties out because this has the gloss of corporate social responsibility and cause marketing. When it's really nothing of the kind.

What's Your Cause Marketing Schema?

One of the defining characteristics of many of the very best cause marketers is that they have a basic cause marketing schema that can be modified and used again and again in multiple contexts.

Susan G. Komen for the Cure, for instance, does walks and runs very well. They’re very good at branded products, too.

Proctor & Gamble’s ‘Buy One, Give One’ approach to cause marketing is well-honed across that behemoth company’s many divisions.

St. Jude’s radiothon... Country Cares for Kids... is terrific example of that fundraising approach. In addition, St. Jude is exceptional at all the back-office elements of cause marketing campaigns, much the way that Wal-Mart excels at logistics.

Children’s Miracle Network raises tens of millions a year using their Miracle Balloon paper icon, which they can customize for almost any retail setting.

Such schema’s form the backbone of the cause marketing efforts for those entities.

For charities the power of having a basic cause marketing schema is that the charity can easily demonstrate to prospective sponsors that if they do X, the campaign will almost certainly succeed. Moreover, the very best cause marketers have driven all the costs out of their basic schema.

I can all but guarantee you that Komen can do a walk/run more cheaply and effectively than any other charity. I know for a fact that CMN pays much less than a penny a piece for their paper icons while less experienced charities struggle to get their per-icon costs to under a nickel a piece.

The ad at the left from the membership magazine of the AAA of Northern California shows me that the Arbor Day Foundation has a basic schema, too.

I’ve seen variations of this same schema from the Arbor Day Foundation. For instance they did a similar campaign with T-Mobile.

So what’s your basic cause marketing schema?