Mashing Up Loyalty Programs and Cause Marketing

In my wallet are cards and keyfobs for a half-dozen loyalty programs from the sophisticated, like SkyMiles and Marriott Rewards and a couple grocery chains to several no-tech buy 10 get one free punch cards from a bakery and a couple of restaurants. Your wallet or handbag probably holds a similar variety of rewards cards.

But is there a potential match between loyalty programs and cause marketing?

Marketing superstar Coke, which runs the gigantic MyCokeRewards.com rewards program, has placed its bet.

Now to be clear, label redemption efforts from Campbell’s, the Boxtops for Education campaign from General Mills and others are both loyalty and cause marketing programs. But MyCokeRewards was founded as an effort to reward Coke purchasers, not their favored causes.

At the left is an ad that ran in the 15 August, 2011 issue of People magazine. Register your school at mycokerewards.com/sprite and it could receive a $25,000 grant to become a ‘Sprite Spark Park.’ Formatted as a sweepstakes, Sprite will award grants to 25 schools to improve their play areas. The sweepstakes ends 30 September, 2011.

According to Alexa.com, MyCokeRewards.com is the 4735th most-trafficked website on the Internet and 828th in the United States. That compares favorably to Delta.com which hosts my SkyMiles card and Marriott.com/rewards, and is orders of magnitude higher than Kroger.com, with whom I have a rewards card.

MyCokeRewards.com gets so much traffic it takes advertising from non-competing brands! (I was surprised and delighted to see a banner ad from Snickers candy bars for its ‘Bar Hunger’ campaign benefiting the anti-hunger charity Feed America!)

Sprite Spark Park is not Coke’s first or only foray into the mash up of loyalty programs and cause marketing. You can donate your MyCokeRewards points to schools, which can redeem them for items from a small catalog of school supplies.

You can also donate MyCokeRewards points in several denominations to the American Cancer Society, the National Parks Foundation, the USO, and The Hispanic Scholarship Fund.

I was aware of MyCokeRewards.com cause efforts in a generic way, but seeing this rewards program/cause marketing campaign mashup has raised my consciousness. And I can now see a number of ways that cause marketing and loyalty programs could benefit each other.

Comments

Batting Your Eyelashes at Prescription Drug Cause Marketing

I’m a little chary about making sweeping pronouncements, but I believe I've just seen the first cause marketing promotion in the U.S. involving a prescription drug. The drug is from Allergan and it’s called Latisse , “the first and only FDA-approved prescription treatment for inadequate or not enough eyelashes.” The medical name for this condition is hypotrichosis. Latisse is lifestyle drug the way Viagra or Propecia are. That is, no one’s going to die (except, perhaps, of embarrassment) if their erectile dysfunction or male pattern baldness or thin eyelashes go untreated. Which means the positioning for a product like Latisse is a little tricky. Allergan could have gone with the sexy route as with Viagra or Cialis and showed lovely women batting their new longer, thicker, darker eyelashes. But I’ll bet that approach didn’t test well with women. (I’m reminded of a joke about the Cialis ads from a comedian whose name I can’t recall. He said, “Hey if my erection lasts longer than ...

Cause Marketing: The All Packaging Edition

One way to activate a cause marketing campaign when the sponsor sells a physical product is on the packaging. I started my career in cause marketing on the charity side and I can tell you that back in the day we were thrilled to get a logo on pack of a consumer packaged good (CPG) or even just a mention. Since then, there’s been a welcome evolution of what sponsors are willing and able to do with their packaging in order to activate their cause sponsorships. That said, even today some sponsors don’t seem to have gotten the memo that when it comes to explaining your cause campaign, more really is more, even on something as small as a can or bottle. The savviest sponsors realize that their only guaranteed means of reaching actual customers with a cause marketing message is by putting it on packaging. And the reach and frequency of the media on packaging for certain high-volume CPG items is almost certainly greater than radio, print or outdoor advertising, and, in many cases, TV. More to ...

Chili’s and St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital

I was in Chili’s today and I ordered their “Triple-Dipper,” a three appetizer combo. While I waited for the food, I noticed another kind of combo. Chili’s is doing a full-featured cause-related marketing campaign for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. There was a four-sided laminated table tent outlining the campaign on the table. When the waitress brought the drinks she slapped down Chili’s trademark square paper beverage coasters and on them was a call to action for an element of the campaign called ‘Create-A-Pepper,’ a kind of paper icon campaign. The wait staff was all attired in black shirts co-branded with Chili’s and St. Jude. The Create-A-Pepper paper icon could be found in a stack behind the hostess area. The Peppers are outlines of Chili’s iconic logo meant to be colored. I paid $1 for mine, but they would have taken $5, $10, or more. The crayons, too, were co-branded with the ‘Create-A-Pepper’ and St. Jude’s logos. There’s also creatapepper.com, a microsite, but again wi...

Cause Marketing

Search This Blog