Target's Gift Card Cause Marketing for St. Jude

When you buy a Target gift card worth $20 or more through December 4, the stylish discount retailer will donate $1 to St Jude Children’s Research Hospital up to $750,000.

Since gift cards are basically stored-value cards and discount retailing has pretty thin margins, how could Target possibly afford to shed $1 out of every $20, even if it’s promotionally-appropriate given Target’s pledge to give 5% of income to charity?

There are a couple of answers. First of all, this is a limited time offer, valid only November 28, 2010 through December 4, 2010, which is fitting since fully 35 percent of all gift cards are sold in November and December.

But all that means is that Target is limiting its exposure, not that it’s necessarily making a sound business decision.

The true answer has to do with the psychology of gift cards, which most of us treat like found money. If you go to Target and the Garmin Nuvi GPS you've had your eye is $99 and you’ve got $80 in Target gift cards, the extra $19 plus sales tax seems like no big deal.

Indeed, according to figures compiled by Fortune magazine, 72 percent of us spend more than the value on the card, an average of 58 percent more.

When you consider that the average value on a gift card is $27 that means the majority of us are likely to spend an additional $15.66 when we redeem our gift card, bringing the total average purchase to $42.66. That’s not the average ticket at someplace like Costco, but it’s not bad either.

And six percent of the value of all gift cards sold are never cashed in. Depending on how Target books gift cards that 6 percent could fall straight to the bottom line.

(Needless to say these averages are for all gift cards given and could be higher or lower at Target.)

Finally, while you can get these cards online or at the store, chances are you’ll buy other goods when you purchase the gift card.

Cause Marketing That’s Good for a Laugh

When you record your digital laugh at Coke’s online ‘Smile-izer’ the cola giant will send $1 to the National Park Foundation, up to $50,000.

Here’s how it works: go to the mycoke.com website, make sure that your webcam and/or microphone is enabled, then press the site’s record button and laugh for about 20 seconds, give or take.

The campaign was activated with online ads (I saw it in my Gmail account).

You can share your laugh and others via Facebook, Twitter and email. Here’s mine.

Here's how the email notification reads:

Your friend would like you to check out Smile-izer. Submit your own laugh today and we'll donate $1.00* to a super cool cause. *Up to $50,000. Coca-Cola Smile-izer

The Smile-izer site has a bunch or caramel-colored bubbles floating from the bottom to the top of the page. Click on one and listen to the accompanying laugh. In addition to regular people like myself, I heard laughs and saw bubbles from American Idol host Ryan Seacrest, along with a bunch of NASCAR drivers including Bobby Labonte, Denny Hamlin, Joey Logano, Jeff Burton, Clint Boyer, and Tony Stewart.

Try as I might, I couldn’t figure out the connection between Coke and this evanescent little campaign and the much weightier National Park Foundation. Here’s what the Smile-izer site says about the National Park Foundation.

“Ever been to Yosemite, the Grand Canyon or Yellowstone? The U.S. National Park Service and the National Park Foundation support and care for these and nearly 400 other amazing parks all across the country. So we just want to say thanks to them for keeping the great outdoors so great. And we want you to join the 285 million park lovers who go each year (if you’re not already going). To find the park nearest you, click here: www.nationalparks.org/findapark.”

I can only assume that Coke is using the campaign to collect email, Twitter, and Facebook info. But unless Coca-Cola has some research that suggests that environmental causes have special resonance with Coke drinkers, I just don’t get why Coke chose the venerable, if not terribly flashy, National Park Foundation as its partner... although Adweek suggests that National Park goers are more active and less obese, thereby leading to fewer anti-soda actions.

That's a valiant effort by Adweek to find the rationale of this campaign. But I still don't get it.

Salvation Army Kettle Drive Kickoff During the Dallas Cowboys Thanksgiving Day Game

The Salvation Army USA, in conjunction with the Dallas Cowboys, Fox Sports, and the National Football League, kicked off its annual kettle drive with a performance by country music star Keith Urban during halftime of the Cowboys – New Orleans Saints game held yesterday, Thanksgiving Day 2010.

This is the fourteenth year the Salvation Army and the Cowboys have teamed up. Since 1997, the Salvation Army holiday kettle drive has generated $1.3 billion, $139 million last year alone.

I couldn’t find any actual footage yet of the performance, so you’re going to have to trust me for now. But the way the Salvation Army was integrated into the performance itself was more stilted than it should have been. The video footage at left is what we used to call a video news release (VNR) meant to promote the kettle drive kickoff.

Immediately before the Urban halftime concert we see footage of him leaving his travel bus parked in the bowels of Dallas Cowboys Stadium. As he walks the corridors toward the field entrance, he and his entourage pass by a series of factoids about the Salvation Army projected on the wall to Urban’s left. This was all plainly pre-taped.

The director cuts to Urban live just as he’s about to run on to the field. He passes through a phalanx of fans and Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders, then trots to the 50-yard line where the stage was set. On the back of the stage on both sides, more cheerleaders are preset in what looked like nothing so much as open cages.

The Salvation Army logo was set stage left and right on the front of the stage deck. It could also be seen on the Cowboys ginormous TV screen that hangs in the center of the stadium.

Urban sang one song with no apparent reference to the Salvation Army. Then in the second number, the front of the stage, which was basically a ramp capable of showing video, began to air a series of images, apparently of Salvation Army volunteers and leaders that morphed into the logo.

There was a little more. The halftime guys gave the Salvation Army kettle launch a little context. We also saw a public service announcement (PSA) that Urban recorded encouraging people to donate using their phones. You can see that PSA in the VNR.

I don’t think the Cowboys and Fox did too little. I just think they emphasized the wrong stuff.

Stalin has been wrongly quoted as saying that the “death of millions of people is a statistic. But the death of one person is a tragedy.”

No matter. For my purposes the meaning of the quote is true. Statistics are boring and uninvolving. The stories of individuals are what move us.

The Salvation Army does so many things (and does them so well, I might add), that it’s far easier to communicate the statistics of its work than to communicate the import of it.

Somewhere amidst all that communications and marketing, the Salvation Army, Keith Urban, Fox and the Dallas Cowboys should have figured out a way to tell one full story of one person or one family that has a new lease on life thanks to the Salvation Army.

Finally, I hold the Salvation Army in such high regard that none of this should be taken as a reason not to support this fine organization. The Salvation Army in the United States is a national treasure. So when you hear the familiar kettle ringers, I recommend that you support the Salvation Army as generously as possible.

Happy Thanksgiving, Cause Marketers

Dear Faithful Readers:

Thanksgiving, that most American of holidays, is today. When I say it’s the most American of holidays I mean no offense to my Canadian readers, who celebrate Thanksgiving the second Monday in October. So maybe I should call the most North American of holidays.

Some Thanksgiving I’m going to write a post on the things Canadians and American have to be thankful for besides the world’s longest undefended border, a language, an appreciation for smoked meat sandwiches in Montreal, and a great holiday, even if it’s celebrated in separate months.

But I have two pumpkin pies to prepare along with an apple caramel pie and my famous pecan pie. So here from 2007 is my favorite Thanksgiving post.

Warm regards,
Paul

Today is Thanksgiving in the States, a day when we watch parades and American football before eating an enormous feast of turkey, ‘stuffing,’ and mashed potatoes, then chase it down with pumpkin pie.

We Americans grew up with a cherished myth that the first thanksgiving was celebrated when the Native Americans invited the Pilgrims over for potluck around harvest time.

Every year historians, journalists and other skeptics chip away at the thanksgiving myth. The latest involves a Spanish explorer named Pedro Menendez de Aviles who dined on bean soup with Native Americans in Florida some 56 years before the more famous meal at Plymouth Rock.

In time no doubt we’ll learn that Leif Ericson in fact broke bread with Native Americans in Labrador around 1000 AD and that the Basques shared their catch of salted cod with the Natives of New England well before Columbian Exchange.

Nonetheless, Americans are pretty much undaunted by these revelations. Here’s why: the holiday as we now celebrate it is just so beautiful. Families and friends gather. An enormous meal is prepared. We talk about what it is that we have to be grateful for at the dinner table. We feast. We loosen our belts and take a nap. Then we go home with leftovers in plastic margarine containers.

For my part, I’m grateful to you my readers. Thanks for putting up with my rants. Thanks for disregarding my too frequent errors of spelling, grammar and logic. Thanks for leaving comments. Thanks for suggesting topics. Thanks for practicing cause marketing wherever you are.

And, happy birthday Katie.

Cause Marketing Christmas

As a holiday, Christmas is surprisingly challenging to cause market around, but a local homebuilder has the bones of a good campaign based on a gingerbread house-building contest that could be duplicated elsewhere.

Cause marketing is commonly linked to holidays. I’ve even argued in this space that the pink ribbon campaigns offer retailers, in effect, an extra selling season.

But with some notable exceptions, like Christmas benefit albums, the redoubtable Salvation Army bell ringers and a few others, Christmas cause marketing isn’t as common as you might expect.

There’s reasons of course.

Unlike Valentines, to name another holiday selling season, Christmas in the United States is for many still a holy day, notwithstanding all the commercialization. And it tends to be a very busy time with family and friends.

But think of all the potential advantages Christmas holds for cause marketers and fundraisers.

• Christmas is a time of giving.
• There’s countless potential ‘hooks;’ Santa and his elves, Christmas trees, bells, carols, holly, brass bands, mistletoe, candy canes, reindeer, etc.
• It comes at the end of the year when Americans are mindful of tax deductions.

Here’s the gingerbread house campaign in question. Build a gingerbread house patterned after a home model built by Ivory Homes and you could win $1,000 for you and $1,000 for your charity of choice.

The campaign is direct, easy to explain and understand, and appropriate to the sponsor.

I would have recommended that Ivory specified a particular charity to direct the donations to. With a little effort, Ivory could turn the contest deadline into something of an event and charged admission to raise funds for said charity.

As is, the event takes place at the clubhouse of one of its communities, which means they can probably accommodate hundreds of people, but not thousands. Since Ivory is almost certainly trying to attract potential homebuyers to its developments, they could put heated tents onsite to increase capacity.

They should probably also consider divisions for children say 5-8, and 9-12. Imagine a men’s division, even a division for professional chefs and bakers, and a people’s choice award. Ivory could challenge its crews to build gingerbread-style children’s playhouses and then auction them off to benefit the chosen charity.

Ivory has multiple developments, so they might consider some kind of round-robin ‘tournament’ that begin at four or eight developments before culminating at the larger event where the winners would be crowned. The gingerbread houses that get the most fan votes moves on to the next round.

This campaign cries out as well for social media elements.

I think this has a lot of potential and is eminently ‘stealable.’

Give Your Cause Marketing a Little Extra Punch with a Coupon Hangtag

FUZE, the water flavored with juices and milk and fortified with vitamins and minerals, is an existing sponsor of Susan G. Komen for the Cure and several of its flavors carry Komen’s trademarked version of the pink ribbon and generate $0.10 for every bottle purchased.

But to give the campaign a little extra punch, several in my grocer’s refrigerated beverage case recently included the coupon hangtag you see below.

There are a number of tactical advantages of this approach to FUZE, the retailer, and Komen:

• The coupon encourages additional purchases.
• It can be executed faster than a label change could.
• It can be placed on the flavors, like this one, that don’t normally carry the Komen pink ribbon.
• It makes the ribbon more visible than the beribboned bottle alone.

The back side of this coupon is blank. It’s a pity that FUZE didn’t turn over that space to Komen for breast cancer information, website links, or inspiring stories about survivors and supporters that FUZE calls Heroes For Hope. Since the coupon doesn’t have to be detached to be redeemed, the whole of the back would have been available for this purpose.

There’s also one notable disadvantage to this kind of paper hangtag; I can guarantee that there are loose hangtags strewn all along FUZE’s distribution network from the factory to the floors of warehouses, transportation trucks, and the store’s backrooms.

Shrinkage, or course, is a cost of doing business. But every hangtag that doesn't stay with its intended bottle is unfortunately wasted.

Cause Marketing For Hollywood

If you’re like me, you’re worried sick about what Hollywood actors and entertainment insiders think about the First Amendment, arts education in public schools, media literacy, and arts advocacy.

So, how better to bridge the gap between Hollywood and the rest of us than by funding things like celebrity-studded public service announcements and public forums where the hoi polloi and the arts community can discuss important issues of the day?

But my personal favorite is highlighted in the ad which brought “celebrities and stylish brands together through exclusive parties, luxe spa services, media suites, and more” in the service of celebrating “all things Hollywood” during the Academy Awards in March 2010.

This is vital nonprofit work my friends.

Forgive the sarcasm. But what else to make of this ridiculous self-indulgent ad? And by ridiculous I mean ‘worthy of ridicule.’

The ad, which ran in Elle magazine in July 2010, features ‘A-list actors… and media tastemakers’ like Stephen Collins and Erin Cummings above a list of ‘I’ll drink to that’ sponsors that include Jack Daniel’s and Monster.

To be fair, The Creative Coalition, which is a 501 (c)(3) public charity, is listed as another sponsor of the events, not the producer. Haven 360 was the producer. But since The Creative Coalition’s logo is seen no less than eight times in the ad, and since there’s little reason for the ad to run without The Creative Coalition’s participation, it’s a distinction almost without a difference.

The Creative Coalition, write co-presidents Tim Daly and Dana Delany in an open letter on the website “is made up of hundreds of actors, writers, directors, producers, journalists, artists, agents, casting directors, attorneys, publicists, dancers, artists, singers... Coalition members …believe that the active involvement in our political system of this highly visible industry is important not just to those who participate, but to the nation as a whole.”

You’ll get no argument from me that entertainers and creatives have a role to play in modern American Democracy. But so do the people who run those noisy street sweepers in mall parking lots at 6 am in the morning. You just don’t see them talking about their political and governmental policy views while getting a couples massage with one of the Kardashian sisters.

That “the Coalition members are caring, concerned professionals who believe that the active involvement in our political system of this highly visible industry is important not just to those who participate, but to the nation as a whole” is self-important nonsense on the scale of a Summer blockbuster.

Certainly “play(ing) an assertive role in presenting the creative community’s views on” issues like the First Amendment and arts education sounds high-minded. But who among us believe that the celebrities came to Haven360 last March for any reason besides the luxe spa services and the swag bag (and probably in that order since the IRS has recently taken a dim view of unreported swag bags)?

And if the price of admission was to bloviate on camera a little about arts education or the First Amendment, that’s a small enough price to pay for A-list tastemakers like Richard Kind.

Vote on Your Cause Marketing Favs from Feb 2010

Dear Faithful Readers:

In early 2011 I'll post my hotly-contested annual best and worst cause marketing campaigns for 2010.

But rather than just hold a meeting with myself to decide which campaigns to anoint as the best I want you, my faithful readers, to weigh in with your preferences. So once a week for the next 11 weeks I'll ask you to vote for your favorite cause marketing of a given month.

Up next, February 2010.

Simply follow the bit.ly links which lead straight to the post, read it, and then vote for the one you like best.

Thanks,
Paul

Sustainable Cause Marketing

A recent flyer from a local grocer with about 10 stores in the chain features two cause marketing campaigns and is timed specifically for the holiday season, one for the local food bank and one for the Salvation Army’s Angel Tree program.

For me this raises a question; regardless of how generous the intent of the grocer, how many cause campaigns can a retailer reasonably sustain at a time?

Although these are both full-page images, I didn’t crop them so that you could get a clear sense of the amount of space the grocer, called Macys, devoted to both causes in the same flyer.

The food bank effort is in some ways an analog to the Chamber of Commerce paper icon campaign I profiled on Monday, November 15, although it is not the same effort. And it’s not a paper icon campaign.

When you’re in the store, purchase a bag of food and pick your favorite team and the food goes to the associated food bank. The team whose fans donate the most food and money get bragging rights for the year. Of course the real beneficiary is the patrons of the two food banks.

The food bank rivalry effort was found on page 6. A few pages deeper into the flyer was an effort benefiting the Angel Tree, a Salvation Army effort for needy children and the elderly at Christmastime.

This is a transactional cause marketing campaign. When you buy goods with the Utah’s Own seal, a portion of the proceeds goes to the Angel Tree effort sponsored by the local unit of the Salvation Army. The CBS-affiliate TV station, KUTV2, co-sponsors the Angel Tree.

I can’t let this pass without saying that the ‘portion of the proceeds’ language is weak and almost always counterproductive to transactional cause marketing. Better to describe what the donation is and how it’s determined.

Utah’s Own designates that the item bearing the seal is manufactured in the state. It’s vague who’s doing the donating, the products or Utah’s Own. The Utah’s Own seal is administered by the state’s Department of Agriculture and Food.

Both these efforts are ‘two-fers,’ that is, two for the price of one. The food bank effort piggy-backs on the considerable rivalry between the University of Utah and Brigham Young University (BYU).

The Angel Tree campaign rides the coat-tails of the growing ‘buy local first,’ which advocates that by buying locally-produced foods you get products that are fresher, have traveled less distance (and thereby used less fuel in transportation), and benefit the local economy more than if you buy the products of national competitors.

Because of this two-fer aspect, I think both these campaigns are more sustainable than if they relied solely on their own merits.

Also, only the food bank effort potentially requires cashiers to ask shoppers for donations. Running two campaigns that required that kind of ask would probably be a nonstarter for Macys.

Cause Marketing That’s a Little Flat

Buy this special Strawberry Crème chocolate bar from Ritter Sport and when you do, you’ll help Alfred Ritter GmbH & Co. make a $100,000 to The Leslie Simon Breast Care and Cytodiagnosis Center.

I bought this 100 gram bar from a floor-standing point of sale display. The coupon below was attached to the top of the display unit.

I had to look up The Leslie Simon Breast Care and Cytodiagnosis Center, but it’s a unit of the Englewood Hospital and Medical Center in Englewood, New Jersey, which is across the Hudson from Manhattan Island. I don’t know Englewood Hospital and Medical Center from Moses, but it is an affiliate of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, which is a respected name.

According to Ritter Sport’s U.S. website, the campaign was launched on October 1, 2010. But by the time I bought the chocolate bar at a neighborhood grocer on November 9, 2010, the display, which was one of those self-liquidating units, was still almost full. I'd bet that I bought the third of fourth bar sold out of an estimated 50 bars in the display.

That’s the challenge of being a specialty brand in a crowded marketplace like chocolate. Even though it’s a premium brand, in the United States Ritter Sport probably has to rely on a second-tier distribution network. Moreover, the display wasn’t exactly in prime real estate in the store where I bought it.

Worse, the display didn’t exactly tell the breast cancer story. It was mostly just pink ribbons and stacks of strawberry creme Ritter Sport bars.

I have an architect friend who, when he sees a building that is interesting looking but ultimately a failure, will try to soften the blow by saying without sarcasm or irony, "nice try."

I'm glad a respected German brand is cause marketing with an American cause. Like my architect friend says, nice try.

But between a promotion that wasn’t exactly timely on the ground, a charity that is almost obscure (the pink ribbon notwithstanding), a display that was underwhelming and poorly placed, this cause marketing promotion falls a little flat.

Cause Marketing Rachael Ray's Dog Food Line

Rachael Ray, the TV personality and chef, and now, brand, is so cute that I’m not sure that if I met her in person that I could stop myself from pinching the cheeks on her face.

I admire her life story, which while not exactly hardscrabble, nonetheless demonstrates unusual determination and hard work. Good for her and all her success. She earned it. I can also commend her as a generous philanthropist.

If one word signifies her brand it’s the first word of the copy in the ad to the left; ‘Simple.’ She made her name and reputation with 30-minute meals. When she cooks she measures nothing, and her recipes are almost insouciant. She cooks like an Italian grandmother, only her dimples are a whole lot cuter.

But when you become a brand and your brand is ‘Simple’ with a capital-S it’s easy to take simple pretty seriously. That’s what’s wrong with this ad for her line of dog food that benefits animal welfare groups including the North Shore Animal League and the ASPCA.

Good on her.

But just look at this double-truck ad from this September 6, 2010 issue of People magazine. The ad is roughly 15.4 inches by 10.4 inches, most of which is given over to white space. I know how art directors get all googly-eyed over ‘negative space,’ but white space doesn’t sell to anybody besides art directors.

No dog owner is going to buy a bag of either Just 6 or Nutrish because the sparseness of the ad seems to perfectly reflect Rachael Ray’s Simple aesthetic…unless they’re art directors.

Are we really expected to get all our visual cues that this is Rachael Ray’s dog food line from her smallish picture on the bag of Nutrish and her signature in the right side panel? Where’s the back story that explains why she’s offering dog food in the first place? I’m a casual fan and I know Rachael Ray is a dog lover, but shouldn’t there be some kind of account that says that when she looked at the current dog food offerings she found them wanting?

The cause overlay is a huge part of the sales appeal, so why is the explanatory logo so small? Why isn’t there at least a partial explanation in this ad of who the benefiting charities are? ‘Rachael’s Rescues’ is so active sounding you could easily assume that her charity is out saving animals, rather than funding charities that do the actual work.

The Nutrish website makes it clear that Nutrish is a kind of Newman's Own, only benefiting animal welfare agencies. Companies like Nutrish and Newman's Own are sometimes called 'all benefits companies.' So where’s the clear explanation of that ‘Rachael’s proceeds help animals in need’ actually means that all profits from Nutrish goes to animal welfare groups?

The ad could certainly do all this and still say Simple.

Cause Marketing for the Chamber of Commerce

The Utah Valley Chamber of Commerce is offering paper icons to member organizations to raise funds for the annual University of Utah vs. Brigham Young University (BYU) Food Drive, which culminates at the rivalry football game in Salt Lake City on Saturday, November 27.

The money collected by BYU fans goes to the Community Action Services and Food Bank in Utah County. The suggested retail price for the icons, called ‘Y Marks,’ is $1.

(At left is a flyer for the campaign. I haven't laid my hands on an actual 'Y Mark' yet).

This is the first time I’ve seen a Chamber of Commerce sponsor a paper icon campaign, but it’s not hard to imagine why the Utah Valley Chamber choose to do it. Utah County, where BYU and the Utah Valley Chamber is located, is a natural hotbed of BYU football fans. It’s logical to assume that most of the small businesses in Utah County are either owned by or employ BYU fans.

Retail businesses are frequently members of Chambers of Commerce, and paper icon campaigns all but require a retail presence to be successful. Paper icon campaigns are also relatively inexpensive; just a few pennies a piece to produce in quantity. It’s easy to imagine a printer who is also a member of the Chamber and a BYU fan bumping the printing of the icons on to the tail end of another print job and doing them for free.

There’s a few other things at play in this campaign that are normally missing in a paper icon campaign.

1. The Chamber almost certainly has hundreds of members with retail storefronts, meaning the potential footprint of the campaign is much larger than if it was taking place only at a chain of grocery stores in Utah County or at all the TGIFridays locations, for example.
2. There’s unusual pride involved, too. The BYU football team is currently 5:5, while the University of Utah (my alumnus) is 8:2. Despite BYU's down year, few rivalries in college football are more bitter and none are as physically close. The two schools are only about 50 miles apart. So if BYU loses to Utah, it could still claim moral superiority if it won the food drive.
   

Even with those added dimensions, I think the Utah Valley Chamber could still make some improvements.

While Utah County is mostly BYU fans, there are a few diehard Utah fans there. Willing Chamber members could sell ‘U Marks’ but at, say, a $5 price. A loyal Utah fan might be willing to pay more to plant his red U in a sea of blue ‘Y Marks.’ The money raised in Utah County by selling 'U Marks' would still go to Community Action Services and Food Bank.

The Chamber could also set businesses against each other to see who sells the most. The incentive could be that the coach of the BYU football team, Bronco Mendenhall, makes a special appearance at the business that sells the most icons.

Finally, the Utah Valley Chamber should share this approach with the Salt Lake Chamber, headquartered in neighboring Salt Lake County, which is home to the University of Utah. (Only in Salt Lake County, the money would instead go to the Utah Food Bank, which serves the Capital City).

In fact, there’s a lot of Chambers around that country that ought to steal this idea.

Is a Lump Sum Donation as Good Transactional Cause Marketing?

Cone’s recent Cause Evolution study found that while transactional cause marketing is still esteemed by consumers, it’s only slightly more so than when a company just makes a lump-sum donation to the cause.

Transactional cause marketing is when the sponsor ties its donation to a purchase.

I posted on the study back in October and while I didn’t quite throw a wet blanket on the idea, I found that part of Cone’s study unpersuasive.

What happens, I wondered, if the charitable donation is in-kind? Does the company’s halo shine just as brightly as if they donated cash? What if the in-kind donation comes in the form of shared ad space?

That seems to be what’s happening in this ad for vitamin D supplements from GNC and in support of the Melanoma Research Alliance. The Alliance funds research into melanoma, which kills right around 9,000 Americans every year. The great Bob Marley died of melanoma at the tender age of 36. GNC sells supplements and nutritional products at mall stores.

The ad comes from the November 2010 issue of Real Simple magazine. The copy is about supplementing your diet with vitamin D, a vitamin vital to good health. There’s plenty of vitamin D available to all of us. Our body synthesizes vitamin D when our skin is exposed to sunlight.

But nowadays, under the advice of physicians, many Americans tend to cover up in sunscreen before going outside, thereby inhibiting the body's production of vitamin D. GNC sells vitamin D supplements, so they’ve got a dog in this fight.

While GNC has engaged in numerous corporate charitable donations and cause marketing campaigns, it doesn’t seem to be donating money to the Melanoma Research Alliance. Here’s how the MRA’s President Wendy K.D. Selig positioned their relationship in an open letter dated October 15, 2010.

"I am pleased to announce that MRA has joined with General Nutrition Center (GNC) in working to generate resources and increase awareness to fight melanoma. Jointly we will be delivering an important message to the public: you don’t need to put yourself at risk of deadly skin cancer to get an adequate supply of vitamin D. We are teaming up to educate the public about melanoma and ways to reduce risk, including avoiding dangerous ultraviolet (UV) rays (from the sun and from indoor tanning), and knowing and regularly examining your skin. Through online tools, print publications and other outreach efforts, we expect to reach millions of people with this important information."

It’s an important message, to be sure. But does sharing space in magazine ads with a cause stimulate the same kind of good will towards a sponsor that a good ole’ transactional cause marketing campaign does?

I’d love to see someone undertake that study.

Vote for Your Favorite Cause Marketing Campaigns from January 2010

Dear Faithful Readers:

In January 2011 I'll post my much anticipated annual best and worst cause marketing campaigns for 2010.

But this year I want to make it more interactive. So once a week for the next 12 weeks I'll ask you to vote for your favorite cause marketing of a given month.

Up first, January 2010.

Simply follow the bit.ly links which lead straight to the post, read it, and then vote for your fav.

Thanks,
Paul

The Charity Fundraiser as a Protection Racket

I’m a cause marketer, not a direct response marketer. So I’m sure there’s all kinds of nuance that’s not plain to me in this recent direct mail piece from Smile Train, Inc.

But holy crap have you ever seen something that seemed more like a charity version of the protection racket?

“Make one gift now (of no less than $250. See the inset below for details) and we’ll never ask for another donation again.”

If you’ve ever watched a movie or TV show about the mob you know what I mean when I say protection racket. A burly guy goes to all the neighborhood businesses and tells the owners something like this:

“There’s been a lot of violence in the neighborhood lately. Mr. Big hates to see that so he’s offering protection to certain businesses like yours.”

The burly guy doesn’t even have to make an explicit threat. It’s implicitly understood that it is Mr. Big’s men who are doing the violence to the neighborhood businesses that don’t pay up.

In this case Smile Train, Inc., a $92 million in revenue charity whose highest paid executive, Brian Mullaney, made $678,058 in 2008, is Mr. Big. The burly guy is that pitiable child on the cover of the card.

Pay up, the picture says, and you’ll never have to see the before-picture of that child’s face again.

The only thing I can figure about the offer is that Smile Train knows exactly what the typical lifetime value of a donor acquired via direct mail is. They also know the average cost of acquiring each new donor. My guess is that Smile Train’s average lifetime value of a donor is right around $250, minus the cost of acquiring the donor.

The offer, then, just reflects Smile Train’s fundraising reality.

Like I said, I don’t know much about direct response, but I do know that one of the hallmarks of that business is that that they’re always testing new ‘packages;’ different copy and headlines, different pictures, different offers, even different envelopes.

Here’s hoping this ridiculous package doesn’t test well.

Consistency in Cause Marketing

I opened up the Alden Keene cause marketing database and set the dial to ‘way back.’ This ad from KitchenAid benefiting Susan G. Komen is from Sunset magazine in October 2002, the year most of today’s third graders were born and a just a year after KitchenAid started its sponsorship of Komen!

There’s a few things that have changed. But many more that haven’t. Let’s analyze the changes and similarities one by one.

1. The most obvious change is Komen’s name and logo. In 2002 Susan G. Komen for the Cure was still using its old silhouette logo and name.
2. Unchanged is Komen’s use of the ribbon, now in its 25th year.
3. The 9-cup pink-colored KitchenAid stand mixer, model KSM150PSPK is still available. Full retail price of the mixer is $299.99. It’s hard to find independent confirmation, but I believe that’s the same price KitchenAid charged for the KSM150PSPK in 2002. Other pink KitchenAid countertop appliances that generate smaller donations include a blender, food chopper, and food processor, among others.
4. Cookforthecure.com is still up and selling other pink KitchenAid merchandise like spatulas, pink silicone cake pans, kitchen timers and the like. The website says that Cook for the Cure has generated more than $7 million for Komen since 2001. The guaranteed minimum donation in 2010 is $350,000
5. The $50 donation to Komen when you buy the pink stand mixer and register it with KitchenAid is also still in place.
   

So with all this consistency is Cook for the Cure going stale?

Of course the risk is always there. But KitchenAid frequently adds new pink products to the mix. There’s new promotional elements. In 2007 they did a promotion with celebrity chef Jacques Pepin. In 2008 they did a pass the plate promotion whereby anytime someone passed on a special pink ribbon plate and registered online a $5 donation was triggered.

This year the promotion was called 1,000 Cooks for the Cure and it integrated both Pepin and the pass the plate element into a kind of home-party fundraiser for foodies benefiting Komen, and empowered by Facebook and Twitter. It's clever and true to the program's name 'Cook for the Cure!'

If KitchenAid and Komen can keep the surrounding promotions fresh, then the base effort with the pink KitchenAid items probably doesn’t need to vary much.

Pink Cause Marketing On the Cutting Edge

Cause marketing is pretty easy to understand. Until it isn’t. From Alden Keene’s voluminous cause marketing database are two breast cancer campaigns that cut against the grain of expectations.

The campaigns in question are both transactional cause marketing, but they aren’t for jewelry or makeup or kitchen goods or clothing, or even pink buckets of KFC chicken, although that one was out there, too.

Instead they’re for shooting gear and a non-kitchen knife.

From the November 2009 issue of Shooting Times is this short editorial piece on an offering from Champion, which makes eye and ear protection for shooters. In 2009 when you bought special pink ammo pouches, shooting glasses or electronic earmuffs Champion donated a portion of the proceeds to Breast Cancer Network of Strength.

Perhaps 20 million women own firearms in the United States. That’s a substantial market, so it’s not surprising that the pink ribbon can be found there. What is surprising to me is that they found a willing nonprofit partner.

I grew up in Arizona, took the shooter safety course as a Boy Scout and spent many a Saturday morning plinking at cans out in the desert. But had Champion come to me, I’m not sure who I would have recommended as a potential partner.

That’s because in my experience many people in the nonprofit space think of shooting and hunting as decidedly retrograde activities.

The second campaign… also from 2009… is not quite as hard to track.

When you bought the pink beribboned Classic SD, which includes a knife blade, nail file, scissors, tweezers and toothpick, Victorinox would donate $1 to Susan G. Komen for the Cure. In addition, Victorinox donated 10% of the retail price of the SD’s sister watch, the pink ribbon Alliance Sport to Komen.

No doubt this was an easier sell to Komen. The Classic SD isn’t exactly a shiv. The blade is long enough to score an orange for peeling, but not much longer than that. My wife has an SD on her key ring and probably uses the little scissors more than anything else. But this is still cause marketing for a non-kitchen knife.

If you need evidence that cause marketing has crossed basically every consumer segment, here it is.

Cause Marketing the Happy Meal

Place your palm of you right hand face up. Now in a quick single motion move it towards your forehand. As your palm strikes your head make the universal sound of “why didn't I think of that” and say, ‘DOOH!’

McDonald’s, the 800-pound gorilla of fast food, has tied a donation from the sale of each Happy Meal to the Ronald McDonald House Charities.

No word from this ad in the June 28, issue of US Weekly magazine or from Happymeal.com how the donation mechanism works or what the donation amounts to.

But what could be more obvious?

Think of all this does for McDonald’s and RMHC. It gives the RMHC an automated and continuous funding source. Since McDonald’s has a pretty good handle on how many Happy Meals it sells every day, that means RMHC, can plan pretty accurately its annual donations.

And for the chain itself, it gives the Happy Meal a little more coverage from the do-gooders who want McDonald’s and other fast food restaurants to separate the toys from the kids meals so as to fight obesity.

This has to be a pressing concern for fast food restaurants in light of what happened in San Francisco on Tuesday, November 2. In a remarkable stroke of governmental nannyism San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors voted to ban restaurants from giving toys with any kids meal that doesn’t meet the city’s nutritional requirements.

Expect other fast food chains to follow McDonald’s lead.

Breast Cancer Awareness Month is Over, Cue the Cause Marketing Backlash

Breast Cancer Awareness Month ended Oct. 31, and I saw more pink ribbon cause marketing than ever, so you can certainly expect the backlash to begin.

Certainly that’s what Cecil Adams, the fine syndicated columnist, is up to in his October, 29, 2010 column called ‘Do pink ribbon campaigns against breast cancer do any good?’

Adams issues three basic laments:

1). Unlike in Canada the Pink Ribbon isn’t owned by anyone in the United States, opening up the campaign to possible corporate mischief.

2). Everyone would be better off if you just sent $12 in rather than go through all the who-ha of collecting and mailing Yoplait lids.

3). While death rates to breast cancer have fallen since 1990, breast cancer incidence rates are actually 25 percent higher than in 1980.

I can’t speak knowledgeably to the science or the physiology of breast cancer, so I’ll just address Adams’ two central problems with cause marketing.

That the ribbon isn’t owned by one entity in the United States certain DOES open it to corporate mischief and ‘pinkwashing.’ I’ve seen and called out plenty of pink ribbon abusers. But that must be weighed against the fact that the pink ribbon campaign is also almost certainly larger and better known than if any one entity owned it.

And Canada isn’t a fair ‘control’ because the media between the two countries is widely shared. Eighty percent of the Canadian population lives within 200 miles of the border. And most Canadians can view American TV, Internet, radio and magazines almost as easily as can Americans. It’s clear that whatever growth has come to the Canadian Pink Ribbon effort is in some part due to the ‘free rider’ effect.

Adams himself points out that U.S. Federal funding of breast cancer research went from $81 million in 1990 to $685 million in 2009, evidence, I suspect, that the popularity of the pink ribbon has influenced national cancer research funding priorities.

As for the hassles of label redemption campaigns, which Adams terms “laborious,” as a cause marketer I don’t disagree. Cause label campaigns are more than 25 years old and kinda retrograde from my point of view. But his larger point is that the amounts raised by cause marketing seem so insignificant.

But to me this is part of the genius of cause marketing. Cause marketing raises pennies from millions of people. If a generous donor gives your nonprofit hospital $1 million, you can be darn sure that you’re going to jump through some hoops for that money. And naming rights are the least of it. The donation tale often wags the dog.

Remember when Joan Kroc left $1.5 billion to the Salvation Army? The gift was made contingent on the Salvation Army building some number of community centers. Before the gift the Sally Ann was explicitly NOT in the community center business.

But if self-same hospital raises $1 million through cause marketing efforts often $0.10 in increments, the democratization of the donation leaves charity free to utilize the money as it sees fit.

There are other benefits of cause marketing to charities. Without cause marketing and without the Pink Ribbon, Susan G. Komen is almost certainly a much smaller, perhaps even regional charity. And you have to factor in the degree to which success in Komen’s walk events is fed by its many successful cause marketing efforts.

I’ve admired Adam’s columns for years, but I think he got this one wrong.

Cause Marketing Ad en Espanol, Almost

In a half-dozen English language magazines Ford Warriors in Pink has used pretty much the same ad (seen below) with a call to action to buy branded merchandise from the campaign’s website. Purchases benefit Susan G. Komen for the Cure.

But the ad on the left from the Noviembre 2009 issue of People en Espanol is more of awareness and esteem builder for Spanish-speakers affected by cancer.

Here’s how one bilingual friend translated it for me:

This [way] isn’t going to be easy.
This [other way] isn’t. It’ll be easy.
A [quick] pause makes all the difference.
Stop. Check yourself. Live. Fight against breast cancer.

I’d be the first to say that you can’t just translate advertising from one language to another and expect it to remain effective. That said, while I can imagine a dozen reasons why Ford Warriors in Pink took this approach, none of them strike me as being terribly compelling.

This is all the more puzzling to me since Fordcares.com, the site where you can but all the Warriors in Pink merchandise, and its Spanish-language sister…sacatiempo.com… mirror each other very closely.

I’d really like to hear opinions from some Spanish-language marketers on this issue.


Hats of to Bryan H. for the Spanish language translation.

My Cause Marketing Wish List to the President and the New Congress

Today is the first Federal election in the United States since 2008. I encourage all my American readers to exercise their franchise and vote.

It's too soon to say how the election will fair for the two major parties in the United States, but this much is clear; come Wednesday the President will yet be Barack Obama.

So on this first Tuesday after the first Monday of November, here’s my cause marketing wish list for President Obama and the new Congress, expressed in an open letter and originally posted on Feb 5, 2009.


Dear President Obama:

You have much to do in the opening days of your administration. But I hope you’ll carve out a little bit of your prodigious energy to think for a moment about a cause marketing, which I define as: “a relationship that bridges cause and commerce in ways that benefit both parties.”

Like many others, I have wishes and hopes for your administration. As a cause marketer, three stand out.

1). Please make cause marketing donations tax deductible. Doing so would almost certainly boost consumer spending.

This has been proposed by Professors Anup Malani and M. Todd Henderson, both at the University of Chicago Law School in your home state of Illinois.

As I wrote in my blog about the proposal:

“It’s hard to imagine getting some kind of tax receipt when you commission a piece of music from Cantilena Music and a donation of $825 goes to a hearing cause, much less trying to figure out how many cartons of Yoplait you consumed in year with $.10 per lid going to Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation.”

Now it’s clear to me how that could work. Up until 2007 noncash donations of $500 or less didn’t require that you submit an appraisal with your tax return. I suppose, strictly speaking, you needed a receipt. But it was all rather pro forma so long as you didn’t claim a huge deduction.

So if you took a bunch of clothes and some other household items (an old stereo, for instance) to the local Salvation Army Thrift Store, so long as you claimed a deduction of less than $500, the IRS was good. The rules were made more stringent beginning with the 2008 tax year.

I propose changing the tax law so that you could you could deduct, oh, $100 or even $250 via what Malani and Henderson call ‘consumer charity’ without having to collect and keep 1000 $0.10 receipts.

How would this boost the economy?

If history, experience and research is any guide, there would be a measurable increase in cause marketing and a corresponding rise in consumer spending. Which would help the U.S. economy. And by now we all know that 70 percent of the economy is driven by American consumer spending.

Plus, as Malani and Henderson point out, disfavoring indirect charitable deductions is demonstrably unfair.

2). I hope you’ll ask the First Lady and the First Daughters, Malia and Sasha, to participate publicly in cause marketing.

For instance, Sasha and Malia could be shown taking part in their school’s Campbell’s label or Boxtops for Education program or Michelle could be photographed wearing clothes or jewelry with a cause marketing component.

But here’s the kicker, whatever cause marketing the First Family illustrates, it has to be identified as such in White House press office materials. As in, “Malia and Sasha Obama drop off Boxtops for Education in the barrel in the front office of Sidwell Friends Private School. Sidwell donates all proceeds from the campaign to a neighboring school.”

Or, “At a private White House Dinner for key State Department officials on Feb 14, Michelle Obama wears a brown silk Cartier love bracelet, a Valentine’s gift from the President. $100 from the sale of the bracelet benefits SOS Children’s Villages.

3). Consider convening a conference on the confluence of commerce and cause with the intent to make policy recommendations.

Call it C3 and hold it in some Midwestern city like Chicago or Minneapolis so that cause marketers from both coasts can come. It should be about more than transactional cause marketing certainly. But that topic shouldn’t be ignored either. Just don’t make it another yawner about corporate social responsibility, which tend to take on an ‘eat your vegetables’ flavor.

Give it a green tint, but not green glasses. And force real recommendations out those impaneled. But don’t let the academics dominate. A lot of academics are like old generals; always fighting the last war.

After you’ve read this I hope you’ll hand it to a key staffer with a short note that reads, “Get this done.” You won’t have to think about it again.

Please give my regards to the First Lady, who I understand celebrated her 45th birthday a few weeks back!


Warm regards,

Paul Jones, President
Alden Keene & Associates

Cause Marketing for Good Eggs

One of the reasons companies participate in cause marketing is to preserve pricing power.

This is more than just a theory. A University of Michigan study published in April 2009 confirmed the efficacy of cause marketing as a corporate strategy for preserving pricing.

Consumers these days have all kinds of power that they didn’t have even 10 years ago. The shelves of today’s grocery stores groan with choice. And in the soft economy, rare is the food producer that can actually raise prices.

That said you don’t often see a sponsor nakedly admit that it utilizes cause marketing in order to keep prices up.

But that’s exactly what Eggland’s Best does in this free-standing insert (FSI) that dropped in my local newspaper on October 31, 2010.

The campaign is basically a licensing deal. Eggland’s Best is giving Susan G. Komen for the Cure $50,000 in exchange for the right to print Komen’s version of the pink ribbon on its eggs during ‘Autumn 2010.’

Eggland’s Best chickens are fed a specially-formatted vegetarian feed with the result being eggs that are lower in cholesterol and saturated fat than regular eggs, and higher in Omega 3 and a number of vitamins. I've had them from time to time and they're good eggs.

But that goodness comes at a premium. In Northern Virginia, Eggland’s Best are going for $3.49 a dozen at Peapod, compared to about $2.25 for a dozen of the house-brand eggs.

Here’s how the body copy reads:

“As always, when you purchase Eggland’s Best eggs you can feel good about giving your family the very best in taste and nutrition. But now you can also feel good about helping to find the cure for a disease that affects millions."

“Eggland’s Best. Now, more than ever, they’re worth it.” (Emphasis mine).

Eggland’s Best needs to give its ad agency copywriters a couple of days off. Plainly these folks are overworked!