What Sponsors Should Measure in Cause Marketing Campaigns

If you’re the sponsor of a cause marketing campaign, you’re in the green room, you’re in a makeup chair and you’re sitting pretty.

Here’s what I mean. When I was writing the Children’s Miracle Network (CMN) Telethon a representative from one of CMN’s largest sponsors used to avail herself of the same makeup services provided for celebrity hosts and guests. Strictly speaking this was verboten. While she appeared on air during sponsor segments, CMN had a separate makeup area for sponsors.

She had some thin excuse why she couldn’t use the regular makeup services… skin allergies or something. At any rate, everyone from CMN in a position to raise the issue with her chose to just let it go. She had a volcanic temper and if she took up a little face time with an honest-to-pete Hollywood makeup artist, what did it really matter?

It’s not so different when it comes to evaluating the success of a cause marketing campaign. While the cause and agency in a cause marketing campaign should have their own criteria for measuring a campaign’s success, the criteria that matters most comes from the sponsor.

It’s the golden rule in action; she who has the gold makes the rules.

So what should the sponsor measure and evaluate?

Social media 'expressions' and their quality.
Dollars raised (if it’s that kind of campaign).
New customers (if it's that kind of campaign).
Customer opinion surveys measured against prior years.
The campaign as it compares against competitors and similar campaigns.
Old media impressions data.
Some sort of measure(s) of pathology. That is, where things are going wrong. If 65 percent of stakeholders complain about the same five things about your campaign, you've got a punch list.

When it comes to gauging external audiences, most of these measurements suggest themselves and so I won’t go further.

Measuring expressions is a new metric that has come with the rise of social media. It gauges how much traffic your brand gets away from your direct control: Tweets, fans/friends on Facebook, bookmarks on the social bookmark sites like Digg, Delicious, love from bloggers, and the like. People don't have to say nice things or not so nice things about your campaign or brand. To the degree that they do, it's worth measuring.

I would argue that one area that sponsors, nonprofits and agencies frequently miss is the measurement of their internal audiences, including rank and file employees, vendors, partners, etc.

A well-imagined and executed cause marketing campaign can help give a company real personality. Cause marketing at some companies helps with employee loyalty and retention. Moreover, with their money or their time, internal audiences often ‘pay’ for a good chunk of cause marketing campaigns.

Wouldn’t it be good to know if your employees find the campaign to be unrewarded drudgery? Or, that your vendors would happily pay more for their participation in the celebrity golf tourney? Isn’t that information worth knowing as you mull over your participation in next year’s campaign?

Part 2: How Chili's Used Cause-Related Marketing to Raise $8.2 million for St. Jude

[Bloggers Note: In this second half of this post I discuss the nuts and bolts of how Chili's motivates support from its employees and managers and how St. Jude 'activates' support from Chili's. Read the first half here.] How does St. Jude motivate support from Chili’s front line employees and management alike? They call it ‘activation’ and they do so by the following: They share stories of St. Jude patients who were sick and got better thanks to the services they received at the hospital. Two stories in particular are personal for Chili’s staff. A Chili’s bartender in El Dorado Hills, California named Jeff Eagles has a younger brother who was treated at St. Jude. In both 2005 and 2006 Eagles was the campaign’s biggest individual fundraiser. John Griffin, a manager at the Chili’s in Conway, Arkansas had an infant daughter who was treated for retinoblastoma at St. Jude. They drew on the support Doug Brooks… the president and CEO of Brinker International, Chili’s parent co...

Cause-Related Marketing with Customer Receipts

Walgreens and JDRF Right now at Walgreens…the giant pharmacy and retail store chain with more than 5,800 stores in the United States and Puerto Rico… they’re selling $1 paper icons for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF). This is an annual campaign and I bought one to gauge how it’s changed over the years. (Short list… they don’t do the shoe as a die cut anymore; the paper icon is now an 8¾ x 4¼ rectangle. Another interesting change; one side is now in Spanish). The icon has a bar code and Jacob, the clerk, scanned it and handed me a receipt as we finished the transaction. At the bottom was an 800-number keyed to a customer satisfaction survey. Dial the number, answer some questions and you’re entered into a drawing for $10,000 between now and the end of September 2007. I don’t know what their response rate is, but the $10,000 amount suggests that it’s pretty low. Taco Bell’s survey gives out $1,000 per week. At a regional seafood restaurant they give me a code that garner...

An Interview with Cause-Related Marketing Pioneer Jerry Welsh

Jerry Welsh is the closest thing cause marketing has to a father. In 1983 after a number of regional cause-related marketing efforts, Welsh, who was then executive vice president of worldwide marketing and communications at American Express looked out his window in lower Manhattan at the Statue of Liberty. The Statue was then undergoing a major refurnishing, and in a flash Welsh determined to undertake the first modern national cause marketing campaign. I say modern because almost 100 years before in January 1885, the Statue of Liberty was sitting around in crates in New York warehouses because the organization building the pedestal ran out of money. And so Joseph Pulitzer, the publisher of the newspaper called The World , proposed a very grassroots solution reminiscent in its own way to Welsh’s cause-related marketing. Pulitzer ran an editorial promising he would print the name of everyone who donated even a penny. Sure enough pennies, along with dimes and nickels, quarters a...

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