IT Professionals: Would This Consumer Cause Marketing Ad Influence Your Buying Decisions?

Can you effectively advertise a consumer cause marketing campaign in a B2B publication? That’s the rhetorical question I had when I saw this ad in the September 29, 2010 of Information Week magazine.

B2B cause marketing can work. But this isn’t a B2B cause marketing promotion. Instead it’s basically the same consumer-driven transactional cause marketing campaign that Samsung has be doing through its Four Seasons of Hope, which has generated more than $20 million in charitable donations since its founding n 2002.

When you buy Samsung electronics at one of the regional retailers listed at the bottom of the ad, Samsung will donate a portion of the sales proceeds to the Dan Marino Foundation, which “provides integrated treatment programs, outreach services and research of chronic illnesses and developmental disabilities in children.”

It probably goes without saying that it's highly unusual to see business to consumer cause marketing advertised in a B2B publication.

So what’s Samsung doing advertising this in Information Week, whose mission is “to help CIOs and IT executives define and frame their business technology objectives.”

Maybe the agency that places Samsung’s advertising thinks that IT executives are more likely to participate in the promotion. Maybe they got the ad for free or for a bargain-basement price. Maybe Dan Marino’s green eyes and easy smile are so hypnotic that even IT guys can’t resist Samsung’s offer.

I’m anxious to hear your ideas. The funniest one gets a free subscription to Information Week magazine, my treat.

Giving a Face to Cause Marketing 'Donors'

If you haven’t heard by now, Mark Zuckerberg, the bare-faced billionaire founder of Facebook just gave the school system in Newark $100 million! He’s been all over the media…old and new…starting with a guest-shot on Oprah (view at left).

On October 2 I will give 100-millionth as much to LIVESTRONG…Lance Armstrong’s anti-cancer charity… thanks to RadioShack. And thanks to RadioShack you can look for my picture in Times Square this coming Saturday as proof.

Here’s how it works: On RadioShack's Team28 website you can enable a gadget to put a 28Badge over your Twitter or Facebook picture. The 28 references the 28 million people worldwide with cancer. By September 17 more than 20,000 pictures had been uploaded.

On October 2…‘LIVESTRONG Day’ Military Island in Times Square in New York will display all the pictures collected during that 24-hour period. For every 28Badge added on LIVESTRONG DAY, RadioShack will donate $1, up to $100,000.

I like it! Although I wish RadioShack would have enabled the donation so that, say, $50,000 was guaranteed with the remaining $50,000 tied to participation rates.

In charitable fundraising we commonly see depictions or images of kids and homeless people, celebrities, beneficiaries in the developing world, corporate logos, and fatcat donors like Zuckerberg. But where’s the picture of the micro-donor?

Show up in Times Square on October 2 and see.

T-Shirt Cause Marketing

We’ve discussed a T-shirt cause marketing by social enterprises in the past with outfits like Rosa Loves. But most of those efforts were based on e-commerce business models.

Now there’s a new social enterprise that includes bricks and mortar retailers as part of its business model. Called Giving Tee, here’s how it works: Retailers sell Giving Tee T-shirt designs in their stores for $20. When customers enter a code on the hangtag of the Tee it triggers a donation to one of Giving Tee’s featured causes.

There are currently 24 charities listed on Giving Tee’s website, including Habitat for Humanity, The Humane Society, Amnesty International, the Red Cross, Make-A-Wish, and the Wear Good for Haiti Initiative. The designs for Wear Good for Haiti are the only Tees Giving Tee currently sells on its website.

The revenue split is as follows: The cause gets $5, the retailer gets $5, the designer (Giving Tee crowd-sources the designs) gets $1, and Giving Tee gets the remainder. After costs Giving Tee says it nets $2-$3.

The usual questions apply with these sorts of enterprises. How do we know that the company actually makes the donation? How long is the lag between the time when the customer enters the code and the charity gets the money?

But the biggest question may be, is this business model sustainable since the inventory and carrying costs are higher? With Rosa Loves and other T-shirt cause marketers, the only inventory expense is the T-shirt blanks, since they routinely make the T-shirts after the order is confirmed.

There are a couple of other questions. Will designers provide enough value for a $1 per Tee? Likewise, will retailers sell a product for at $20 for a $5 margin when they’re accustomed to making $10 (assuming a 100% retail markup)?

I hope Giving Tee succeeds for at least a couple of reasons. New firms create more jobs than do more established firms according to studies by the Kauffman Foundation. As a cause marketer I personally want all reputable social enterprises to thrive.

But I suspect Giving Tee, which is a new firm, is going to need to tweak its business model a little before success comes.

Rival Cause Marketing

One way to improve the likelihood of response to your cause marketing is to create an aspect of rivalry.

If you’re doing an icon campaign for instance, you could and probably should draw on existing rivalries to see who can sell the most. So you might pit division against division, managers against managers, and even individuals against each other for bragging rights and prizes. As I written before, icon campaigns can be thought of as sales contests.

A company based here in my home state, ZAGG, is using rivalries among its consumer base in a cause marketing campaign. ZAGG sells a clear thin film that covers iPads, iPhones, smartphones and the like, as well as other accessories for electronic devices.

Called the ZAGGSkins Fan Challenge, ZAGG will donate 20 percent of all proceeds to the National Kidney Foundation of Utah & Idaho when you buy either a University of Utah or Brigham Young University branded ZAGG covering.

The Utah-BYU rivalry... sometimes called the 'Holy War'... is one of the most intense in all of college football. The teams are separated by only 50 miles, so proximity feeds the rivalry. But because Utah is a state school and BYU is affiliated with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, there’s also a religious aspect to the rivalry probably unique in the country. In an ironic twist, the president of the University of Utah is an alumnus of BYU and the president of BYU is an alumnus of the University of Utah!

Key to the promotion is tracking page on the ZAGG webpage that shows which team is buying the most branded ZAGG coverings. At this writing Utah leads 67% to 33%. The promotion is advertised heavily on the three sports radio stations in the market.


12-10-2010 Update. I saw a press releases from ZAGG today saying that their campaign netted $7,777.77.

A Clever Cause Marketing Campaign from Snickers and Feeding America

Back in August I bought this cause-marketed Snickers bar during my fourth trip of the day to Home Depot. (Is it even possible to do home repairs and take care of all your needs with just one trip to Home Depot/Lowes?)

Here’s how it works: Snickers is donating the cost of 2.5 million meals to Feeding America, the nation’s leading hunger-relief charity. On the inside of the wrapper is a code. Text that code to 45495… or enter it at snickers.com… and Snickers will donate the cost of one meal to Feeding America, up to one million additional meals.

The Feeding America website says that each dollar you donate provides seven meals. So Snickers donation might be something like $500,000. But I like that Snickers quantified its donations in terms of meals made available, rather than dollars. That’s much more concrete.

It doesn’t hurt that 3.5 million is a much bigger number than $500,000.

I also like the way they structured the donation. By guaranteeing 2.5 million meals, the risk of a poor response to the offer is mitigated for Feeding America. Likewise the risk that the promotion could take off leaving Snickers on the hook for a much bigger donation is also allayed.

Feeding America is the biggest player in this space and the right partner for Snickers, which positions itself as the snack that ‘handles your hunger.’

Meanwhile, it would appear that Snickers gets your cell phone number for marketing back to you. I hope Snickers shares that information with Feeding America.

This promotion also helps Snickers against upstarts like Kind Healthy Snacks, which is an active cause marketer.

All in all, an impressive effort.

Cause Marketing Gallimaufry

A bunch of emails pitching various cause marketing stories have been piling up in my inbox and now it’s time to set them free in a giant gallimaufry.

One Eyed Rhyno, a Sacramento-based teen rock group comprised of brother and sister James (16) and Elaine (18) Hunter and longtime friend, Andrew Daniels (17), have released their single entitled, “The Bird,” inspired by the Exxon Valdez and made newly-relevant by the BP Gulf oil spill. Proceeds from the download of “The Bird” go to The Student Conservation Association.

Bisquick is making $250 grants to qualified nonprofits to put on pancake breakfast benefits. Now in its second year, Bisquick Pancake Nation granted nearly $30,000 last year to more than 100 schools and nonprofits to kickstart their pancake breakfasts.

Lights. Camera. Help., a national nonprofit organization whose mission is to celebrate “cause-driven films,” is holding a local event at the Olde North Charleston Picture House in Charleston, South Carolina on September 25, 2010 at 7 p.m. Tickets are available online for a $10 donation and day of at the event.

Monday, October 4 is World Habitat Day, a recognition by the United Nations of the mission of Habitat for Humanity, and a chance to advocate, fundraise, and educate about the need for affordable housing worldwide.

Just in time for the holidays, Greyston Bakery… which makes the brownies for Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream… is teaming with Ben & Jerry’s to introduce its Ultimate Brownie Sundae Kit which includes: ice cream bowls, Do-Goodie Brownies, an ice cream scoop, a recipe card, and a coupon for a free pint of Ben & Jerry's.

Speaking of Ben & Jerry’s, VolunteerMatch.org… which inspired the flavor ‘Berry Voluntary,’ sold exclusively at Target… has issued a challenge to Stephen Colbert, the inspiration for the Ben & Jerry’s ice cream flavor ‘Americone Dream,’ to see who has the better tasting and more popular flavor.

In time for National Breast Cancer Awareness Month in October, retailer Kohl’s has released a line of products from Simply Vera Vera Wang priced at $5 and $10 and benefiting the fight against breast cancer. The merchandise is available online and at Kohl’s stores in Wisconsin.

Cause Marketing that Makes You Go Huh?

Buy a specially-marked bottle of Bayer HealthCare’s venerable brand One A Day multivitamin between September 16 and November 30 and you can redeem a code on the packaging or the store receipt at CaféPress.com and for $10 you get a semi-customized T-shirt with $1 from the sale of each T-shirt going to the Breast Cancer Research Foundation, up to a maximum donation of $10,000.

How do I know this? It's certainly not in the headline or subhead of the FSI to the left. Instead that run-on thought of a cause-marketing effort is spelled out right there on the very bottom of the FSI in reversed out 2-point type. Sharp-eyed mice everywhere will be able to read it.

It’s also on One A Day’s microsite, whatmatterstoyou.com.

Where to start with this mess of a cause marketing campaign?

Certainly multi-stage efforts like this have been a part of cause marketing almost since the beginning. But this one is complicated enough to be almost silly.

The FSI ad above literally can’t explain it all without resorting to mice-type. It’s not until you get to the website that you learn the money goes to the Breast Cancer Research Foundation. The FSI copy says only that the money goes to a cause ‘to be determined.’

As a result you get this weirdness whereby One A Day is co-branded not with a specific breast cancer charity, but with Café Press, the provider and fulfiller of the T-shirt offer. Now maybe One A Day had to throw Café Press’s logo to secure the $10 pricing, but does the Café Press presence otherwise enhance anyone’s willingness to redeem this offer?

The pink ribbon is synonymous with breast cancer charities, but it is not, by itself, a breast cancer charity.

The donation, $1 for a $10 item is a nice donation amount. But the $10,000 limit seems unhelpfully low.

The 'What Matter’s to You' piece of this is also hard to figure out. The guts of it come from Mindbloom, which is a kind of social network/goal-setting/game. If you find Mindbloom social network appealing, why register for it through the What Matters to You website? One A Day gives you no reason to do so.

Plus, how many people really want a T-shirt, even if it has your name on it, that also has branding from What Matter’s to You and One A Day on it? Now you can get all kinds of T-shirts these days with corporate branding on it. I’ve got a cool brown T-shirt with an Atari logo on it for instance. But I bought it for its retro appeal, not to pimp for Atari.

Finally, One A Day almost certainly had to guarantee the T-shirt blanks from Cafe Press as well as underwrite the cost of shipping. So One A Day is probably paying no less than $3 per shirt. Add to that the $1 per T-shirt donation and One A Day is into this for no less than $4 of hard cost per shirt. Why didn't they just take that $40,000 give or take and put together a more streamlined and compelling campaign?

This effort is a classic case of marketers putting together something that meets their needs and desires... and no one else's.

Deal Points When Cause Marketing With a Celebrity

For about three years Louis Vuitton, the luxury goods maker, has been doing cause marketing with celebrities in benefit of the celebrity’s cause of choice. In the current issue of Conde Nast Traveler magazine the celebrities are Bono and his wife Ali and the cause is Conservation Cotton Initiative Uganda.

For cause marketers this is all pretty boilerplate until you get to the second (and last) sentence of the body copy, which reads: “Profits from the bag, as well as Ali and Bono’s fee, benefit Conservation Cotton Initiative Uganda.” (my italics)

(If I were any good at Photoshop the two halves of the double-truck ad would blend together better and I’d do a callout of the sentence for you, my faithful readers. But alas.)

Bono and Ali also appear in the ad in their own ethical clothing line called Edun.

I’ve been looking at these Louis Vuitton ads for a while now and this is the first time I’ve seen that clause or another clothing line co-branded. But it demonstrates four things:

• Not every celebrity donates their appearance fee.
• It’s something the charity can ask for (but not necessarily get) in the negotiation.
• It’s a deal point that sponsors can suggest when negotiating with celebrities; ie. if you donate your fee to the cause, we’ll put it in the ad copy.
• If the celebrity is big enough sponsors will consider co-branding with a competing outside brand.