5% of $500 Million Would Be the Super Bowl of Cause Marketing

In time for Super Bowl 45 and its $100,000-a-second ads, Haberman, a media and marketing agency in Minneapolis has unveiled Add or Delete, a website and (potentially) a movement meant to persuade the global ad/marketing/PR agencies to donate 5% of the $500 billion annual global advertising budget to benefit global good.

5% of $500 billion would be $25 billion a year... the Super Bowl of Cause Marketing. That's a lot of scratch. But the numbers get big mighty fast when talking about the Super Bowl.

According to Haberman, a 30-second Super Bowl ad costs $1 million for production alone and another $3 million to air, meaning that Fox will gross something like $270 million for the 2011 game alone. In the last 20 years more than $2.7 billon has been spent on Super Bowl advertising.

Here’s what Haberman is suggesting. Go to the Add or Delete site on Facebook, a kind of ‘Hot or Not’ site for advertisements. If an ad inspires and delights, add it. If not, delete it. The sub rosa intent of the site, however, is to encourage global ad/marketing and PR agencies to convert 5% of the global ad spend to support the global good.

That's a goal I can get behind.

You may hear in Haberman’s challenge an echo of 1% for the Planet, founded in 2002 by Yvon Chouinard, founder of the company Patagonia, and Craig Matthews, owner of the firm Blue Ribbon Flies. The difference is that 1% for the Planet is an actual nonprofit charity that has ‘initiated,’ in their words, more than $50 million in environmental giving from corporations that bear the 1% for the Planet seal. All told more than 1400 companies in 38 countries have signed up and donated to more than 2,000 environment groups worldwide. And the premise of 1% is so straightforward that it takes a staff of just seven to administer it.

Haberman isn’t likely to start a “5% for Global Good” type nonprofit any time soon. Instead they’re taking advantage of the promotional hubbub that always accompanies Super Bowl ads to draw attention to what the advertising industry could do and be. As day follows night, after the Super Bowl airs there will be a raft of local and national TV shows and publications that will convene a panel of advertising executives to dissect the ads they saw. No doubt Haberman will issue a release after the Super Bowl to say how various ads did according to Add or Delete.

If Haberman wants this promotion to become a movement it will have to not only make its own 5% pledge, it will need to convince other agencies to do the same. And that’s no mean feat. Target, also headquartered in Minneapolis, has been openly giving 5% of income to nonprofits for decades. But not many of Target's competitors have matched the company's giving efforts.

Patagonia’s Chouinard says that participation in 1% for the Planet has yet to meet his expectations. “I would have thought that 1% for the Planet would be bigger by now,” Chouinard told Mountain Sports + Living magazine. It’s a disappointment that we haven’t attracted larger companies. Patagonia is still the largest member. There are so few companies giving back, even outdoor companies.”

I admire 1% for the Planet and I like Haberman’s effort. But good ideas don’t sell themselves. If Haberman really wants 5% to take off, it’s going to have to go to its peers and sell them on it.

So Dark The Con of Men

I recently read that Aaron Tonken, convicted felon who defrauded charities, celebrities and politicians alike is out of prison now working on his second book (his first one is at the left) and eager to consult with you on your next fundraiser, although he's legally barred from handling money or fund raising directly. You can find him him on LinkedIn and Facebook.

He tells the Los Angeles Times that he's a changed man, properly medicated and emotionally stable.

A charity I worked for partnered with Tonken who went to prison in 2003 for fraud. The charity lost $100,000 due to Tonken’s machinations, but we recovered the money in full within weeks and well before his prosecution and conviction.

That same charity nearly did a deal with Cameron Lewis, who is in prison in Minnesota for defrauding hundreds of school districts of nearly $40 million using a now-defunct charity called the National School Fitness Foundation (NSFF).

The fraud amounted to a Ponzi scheme.

I knew Cameron. Met him the first time over lunch at a Chinese restaurant along with several of his board members. I met with him subsequently a half-dozen more times. He had a certain charisma.

Tonken, unlike Lewis had no discernible charisma and a farrago of speech impediments and facial tics. Even in small group settings he was twitchy as a cat in a room full of wheelchairs.

What both men shared in common is that they were accomplished fabulists. When Lewis explained how the NSFF was paying for the fitness equipment, it seemed plausible.

When Tonken told you that he could get Cher, or the Backstreet Boys, or Diana Ross to your event, you believed him, in no small measure because there was that tape of Bill and Hillary Clinton toasting him at a star-studded 2000 Hollywood fundraiser, which Tonken produced.

The fact that Tonken told you what celebrities he could deliver for your charity event while George Hamilton sat next to him at dinner nodding agreeably only helped. Likewise, Lewis hired competent and honorable people, who themselves had no part in the fraud, but who believed in and spoke persuasively about the NSFF’s mission.

There are people out there who by dint of personality or sociopathic immorality are capable of defrauding well-meaning and otherwise prudent charities.

So how do you keep your charity’s nose clean?

1. The test of time. Like all Ponzi schemes, the earliest participants do just fine. The NSFF was able to make equipment payments for the initial school districts with the earnest money paid by the ensuing school districts. But the whole NSFF enterprise rose and collapsed within the space of five years. If as a school district you said no to the NSFF the first time around, by the second time they came around it was all over but the shouting.
2. Don’t be seduced by celebrity flash. Two of Tonken’s more common techniques for securing celebrity support was the use of expensive gifts (watches, jewelry and the like), and by making large pledges or actual donations to the celebrity’s own charity. Both were paid for with someone else’s money. For his part Lewis successfully wooed a number of prominent politicians, who publicly hailed the work of the Foundation. If you looked no deeper than the celebrity involvement or implied political endorsement, you were likely sunk.
3. Don’t dismiss niggling doubts out of hand. The cost of the fitness equipment to each school cost in Lewis’s scheme was something like $50,000, which the NSFF pledged to repay in full. But there was no legitimate revenue stream to cover that expense. My mind reeled when Cameron first laid out those numbers. There’s about 90,000 public schools in the United States and 90,000 multiplied by $50,000 is $4.5 billion! There’s not too many $4.5 billion charities in the United States. But I said to myself, “they seem like capable people. Surely they’ve figured out something that isn’t apparent to me.”
4. Curb your enthusiasm. The schools got sucked in because of the epidemic of obesity in American children these days. The school districts desperately needed something that worked, and the NSFF had compelling evidence that their program was effective. Likewise, the charity I worked for desperately needed a splashy event that announced its arrival. What better way to do that than with a bunch of A-list celebrities in attendance?

This is hardly an exhaustive list. I’ve left out obvious things like having a competent accountant or lawyer look over agreements or books. That’s probably prudent, but one of Lewis’ own financial people, a sophisticated and principled CPA, didn’t smell a rat until he’d been there nearly a year; but when he smelled the stench of fraud, he immediately resigned. And in the case of Aaron Tonken, he wouldn’t have shown you his books if you’d have asked and didn’t have to because he was organized as a for-profit.

It probably wouldn’t have been that helpful to check references either. The first schools in the NSFF program were all delighted. Until Tonken's tell-all book came out, so was every celebrity he dealt with.

Five Words: Maria Sharapova and Cause Marketing

“Now I don’t know what you do for your five-percent, but this man my husband has a whole plan, an image... we majored in marketing, Jerry, and when you put him in a Waterbed Warehouse commercial, excuse me, you are making him common. He is pure gold and you’re giving him “Waterbed Warehouse” when he deserves the big four -- shoe, car, clothing-line, soft-drink. The four jewels of the celebrity endorsement dollar.”

The wonderfully watchable actress Regina King spoke those lines as Marcee Tidwell in the 1996 Tom Cruise, Renee Zellweger, Cuba Gooding Jr. movie Jerry Maguire.

The script was written by Cameron Crowe, but the sentiment probably came straight from legendary Southern California sports agent Leigh Steinberg. It’s said that Crowe, who also directed the movie, shadowed Steinberg for months while writing the script.

Nowadays, there are two new jewels in the celebrity endorsement crown; an eponymous foundation and a luxury watch deal. Check here for a list of the charities celebrities support. This organization helps celebs set up and efficiently operate their own charities.

Having heard Steinberg speak on the subject of philanthropy and sport, I’m pretty sure he was advising select clients to start their own foundations well before Jerry Maguire came out. For instance, one of Steinberg’s longtime clients, NFL Hall of Famer Steve Young, started his Foundation called Forever Young way back in 1993.

Maria Sharapova, the toothsome Russian tennis star and Grand Slam champion in the ad above, has a foundation that presently offers scholarships to students from Chernobyl-affected regions of Belarus, where Sharapova has ties. Sharapova’s Foundation website says that the scholarships for select students are at the Belarusian State Academy of Arts and the Belarusian State University, but details at the site are sketchy even a year later. The above ad, from the Alden Keene Cause Marketing Database, dropped in Lucky magazine in Jan 2010.

Ten years ago USA Today looked at more than 250 charities closely affiliated with sports celebrities and found a mixed bag. About 50 percent were considered ‘efficient,’ that is they spent no less than 75% of expenses on actual charitable work. But a goodly chunk seemed to be better at fun raising than fundraising.

USA Today reported that while intentions were often good, few athletes or even their representatives were well prepared for the work of running a charitable foundation.

“Sosa Foundation President Chase acknowledges he made mistakes and figures he’s not alone.

“‘I was running it kind of like a private business. Now I understand there’s a difference. ... One of the IRS guys commented to me, ‘All these athletes start these things, but they never finish them because they don’t understand what it entails... They’re hiring brothers, mothers and fathers.’”

Moreover, the Internal Revenue Service requires a high level of reporting transparency from public and private charities in the United States. The USA Today story detailed cases where athletes were largely uninvolved in charities that carried their name, but because the charity was poorly managed it turned out to be a public relations nightmare for the celebrity.

In short, if they manage their Foundations with probity and prudence, sports celebrities can rightly expect the cause jewel in their endorsement crown to provide a real halo effect. If not, the celebrity foundation can be a crown of thorns.

Getting NPO Logos Size Right in Cause Marketing Ads

I beat up Outdoor Research pretty badly in yesterday’s post for promoting its sponsorship of the nonprofit charity Leave No Trace so inconspicuously that it could scarcely be seen.

Already I’ve been getting blowback for being too sharp in my criticism. Others have asked, in effect, “alright Mr. Smart Guy, how should sponsors promote their cause relationships when the ad itself isn’t primarily about the cause?”

It’s easy to understand this sentiment. I suspect that Outdoor Research's advertising budget is modest. No one, least of all me, blames a small company for adding one of its long time causes… Leave No Trace… to its existing advertising. By and large its bigger companies... like Proctor & Gamble and Coke... with fat advertising budgets that feature only their chosen cause.

The effort at left from Pure Protein Bar manages to balance its ad with the logo of its preferred cause just fine. The ad is about making better food choices, not Multiple Sclerosis. But no one would look at this ad and have any problem seeing and understanding that Pure Protein also proudly sponsors the National Multiple Sclerosis Society.

I found the ad in the Alden Keene Cause Marketing Database. It ran in Fitness Magazine in March 2009.

Like the Outdoor Research ad, there’s an attractive person representing the target market. Both have a product shot and the usual other elements of print advertising. But Pure Protein reproduces the National Multiple Sclerosis Society to about ¾” square in an ad that is about 10½” x 7¾”, or about 81.3 square inches.

Pure Protein’s ad is almost exactly half the size of Outdoor Research’s ad, but they reproduce the cause’s logo half again as big as Outdoor Research did in its ad.

I know of no formula that tells you how big an ancillary logo ought to be in an print ad. But like U.S. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart said about another topic, “I know it when I see it.” Put simply, and maybe vaguely, the nonprofit's logos in such ads has to be big enough.

Pure Protein's use of the National MS logo is big enough, while Outdoor Research's use of the Leave No Trace logo was not.

Size Matters in Cause Marketing

Maybe it’s the old school Barry White I’m listening to as I write this, but size matters in cause marketing. (And don’t go there all you with dirty minds. I mean only that Barry was a sizable man and thereby able to attain certain vocal dynamics in the bass range that men of lesser stature could not).

I was reminded of this when I saw this ad for Outdoor Research in Outdoor USA Magazine, a trade publication that I picked up at the Winter 2011 Outdoor Retailers trade show.

Outdoor USA Magazine is tabloid sized and printed on matte paper. This ad for Outdoor Research, a 27-year-old outdoor gear company, is roughly 10.25” x 15.85. Down there in the bottom third of ad, beneath the fold, past the body copy Outdoor Research declares its solidarity for its nonprofit partner, Leave No Trace Center for Outdoor Ethics, whose logo is reproduced approximately .57” x .48”.

To put it another way, Outdoor Research’s ad is about 162 square inches. Of that space, Outdoor Research trumpets Leave No Trace with approximately 2.7 square inches, or a little more than 1.6% of the space in the ad.

But is ad space any kind of measure of a sponsor’s commitment to a cause? After all, Outdoor Research has been a sponsor of Leave No Trace for more than 10 years and is currently listed as one of LNT’s ‘Special Project Partners.’

As a matter of fact logo size in an ad is a good, if imperfect, gauge of the depth of Outdoor Research’s dedication to the cause. The Leave No Trace Outdoor Research deal probably got done by vice presidents or above. But the terms of the deal are implemented by directors and below.

In other words, if the relationship hasn’t really penetrated Outdoor Research’s culture, then the directors are left to execute the terms of the agreement as they see fit. Sans any kind of specific direction or any particular passion for the cause, the directors do what makes sense to them.

In this ad, Outdoor Research left almost no trace of its sponsorship of the Center for Outdoor Ethics.

Trade Show Cause Marketing

I spent a few hours at the Outdoor Retailers annual winter trade show on Friday, January 21, 2011 going from booth to booth and looking for notable cause marketing efforts.

Among them was a show-only effort from Columbia Sportswear, meant to promote a line of outerwear and boots called Omni-Heat Electric, along with other offerings from Columbia.

Three times a day on Thursday, Jan 20 and Friday, Jan 21, Columbia held a fashion show featuring Omni-Heat Electric and other offerings. When you Tweet out pictures from the fashion show with the hash tag orshowCA#, Columbia will make a $5 donation to the nonprofit Conservation Alliance.

The minimum donation will be $4,000 and the maximum will be $7,000.

I spoke to Jinn Brunk, a member of Columbia’s corporate responsibility team, and she said that they may follow up with all Tweeters with a message like, “we thought you’d like to know that we made a donation of (say) $6,755 to Conservation Alliance. Thanks for your help!”

The least communicated message in cause marketing is “here’s what happened,’ so that’s a smart approach. Because the promotion is Twitter-based, it’s super easy to follow up. The only challenge will be striking a balance between responsibly following-up and going too far.

Like any trade show, a good portion of what goes on at the Outdoor Retailer show is business intelligence. That is, people want to see and appraise what their competitors are doing.

Still, Columbia, which is moving up-market with products like Omni-Heat, wants to attract retailers to its booth. One thing it might consider is coming up with some way to reward the behavior of retailers who Tweet the promotion, more than they do for passers-by like me.

Imagine then some kind of mechanism such that when retailers have their Tweets about the event re-Tweeted that Columbia makes an additional $1 donation per re-Tweet, up to the proscribed maximum donation.

Grassroots Cause Marketing from Volvo

Buy a virtual glass of lemonade from Lemonadestandforlife.com, sponsored by Volvo, and the money goes to Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation to support families who must travel for their child’s cancer treatments.

Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation, is named for Alex Scott, who in the year 2000 at the age of 4 announced to her parents that pediatric cancer must be cured and to do her part she was going to sell lemonade from a stand. Alex herself suffered from neuroblastoma and died in 2004 at the tender age of 8. By then she had already raised $1 million for cancer research.

Now a 501(c)(3) charity, Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation, has generated $35 million for cancer research, $12 million of it from lemonade stands.

Volvo’s relationship with ALSF began in 2002 when Alex was nominated for the inaugural Volvo for Life Awards. She won it in 2003. And in 2004 Volvo dealers helped Alex meet her goal to raise $1 million for pediatric cancer research before the year end. Sadly, Alex died in August 2004. But inspired by her determination, Volvo dealers pitched in and helped Alex surpass her goal. At left is an ad from the Alden Keene Cause Marketing Database that gives a little more background on the relationship.

Volvo does an annual national car raffle for ALSF. And Volvo seeded the Lemonadestandforlife.com with a $200,000 donation. There’s a counter on the site, which came online in time for Christmas 2010, that says: “As of today, 213,688 cups have been purchased.”

Assuming everyone paid $1 a cup that means that the virtual lemonade stand has generated $13,688 above and beyond Volvo’s donation.

If true, that has to be a disappointment for both ALSF and Volvo. The problem, in my view, is that too often these virtual icon campaigns don’t offer quite enough. These promotions can seem thin. Recognizing this, the MDA, a few years back, added a free musical download to people who bought their virtual shamrock. But I’m not sure that’s enough any more.

The site does offer the usual social media ways of distributing the purchased lemonade cup; email, Facebook and Twitter. But by itself, plain vanilla social media isn’t enough either.

Imagine instead a game. Maybe the cups of lemonade are launched at a penguin, Alex’s favorite animal, whose thirst can’t seem to be slaked. Think Angry Birds. You play the game for a $1 donation and your score is posted on Twitter and Facebook. You get extra plays for more money or for sending links to friends in your social network. The game would have levels and would be able to remember where you left off.

This is more involved in every way than the simple website Volvo has posted, but also more involving. Done right the game would be sticky. Something users would return to again and again.


Lastly, Happy Birthday to my own Alex!

Cause Marketing to Raise Awareness

Up there in the masthead of the blog is Alden Keene’s definition of cause marketing: “Cause marketing is a relationship that bridges commerce and cause in ways that benefit both parties.”

There’s nothing in the definition about money changing hands, even if that’s how we typically think of cause marketing. Indeed, cause marketing is often configured so as to raise awareness. That’s the case in the campaign recently profiled in this space from Feeding America and featuring Laila Ali and Curtis Conway and that’s the case in this multi-faceted campaign from Becton, Dickenson and Company (BD), a $7.3 billion (sales) provider of medical instruments and supplies.

BD’s website says it basically has two philanthropic approaches; donations of cash and product, and “raising awareness for a healthier world.”

In 2009, BD gave $11 million, split evenly between in-kind product donations and cash donations. If I read the graphic correctly all the in-kind donations went to global humanitarian groups, which makes sense since they probably don’t want donated medical supplies competing with anything they sell in developed markets.

To raise awareness “BD has created vehicles such as the Trusted Partners communications campaign and Horizons traveling photo exhibition to draw attention to urgent global healthcare needs and to highlight the activities of our dedicated partners.” Some ads for BD’s Trusted Partners are at the left.

In fact, BD is looking for professional and amateur photographers for its awareness programs.

There’s a slideshow from photojournalist James Nachtwey about the ravages in Africa of extreme drug resistant TB and for which he won the TED Prize.

I applaud BD for their awareness raising efforts. But there’s something conspicuous by its absence and that is video. I like photographic stills as much as anyone. I’ve been known to step into traveling photo exhibitions. But often as not it’s me and six other people at those traveling exhibits. Ever since the les frères Lumiere starting making the pictures move, stills have been losing ground to them.

But, you say, film and video have to be edited. They require a crew and a script and narration and a score. Just lighting a shot for a movie can take hours. Never mind that under the hand of an artistic photographer, still images can be wondrously affecting.

Moreover, while photojournalist James Nachtwey might wait for the light to turn just right or a subject to cock their head just so, his job is much less involved than a full motion video camera crew.

However, this is a matter of reframing BD’s purpose. Raising awareness of extreme drug resistant TB… a point of emphasis for BD… doesn’t necessarily require exquisitely artistic still images of TB sufferers in Africa. If the point is to raise awareness so that things will be changed for the better, that requires bigger audiences than even an appearance on TED can bring. To really move the needle on extreme drug resistant TB requires moving images.

Think about it this way. Al Gore presented An Inconvenient Truth countless times as a slide show to live audiences large and small. His nonprofit The Climate Project encouraged volunteers to take basically the same presentation to local schools, senior centers, Rotary meetings, and the like. But it took until the time when the eponymous movie was released before the movement reached its tipping point. A good argument can be made that the movie also cemented Gore's Nobel Prize.

So imagine instead that BD sends a dozen young documentary film makers out with one of those new Canon or Nikon SLRs that use natural light and capture pretty decent video with sound. They’re pretty fancy looking for still cameras, but as video cameras go, they’re rather low key.

The job of these young documentarians would be to go to the places in Africa where extreme drug resistant TB is rampant and capture the life of just one individual with drug resistant TB, then craft a compelling 10-minute story.

Why just one story each? Like Joseph Stalin reputedly said, the death of millions is a statistic. But the dying of just one person is a tragedy.

The five best stories would be linked with a single narration voiced by someone like Liam Neeson.

Where would the resulting show air? Maybe Frontline on PBS. Or one of the gajillions of cable news outlets. Or, you could wrap a larger promotion around it and do something in movie theaters with Fathom Events.

I suspect BD could do it for the price of a year's worth of these magazine ads.

Finally, it may well be that photojournalist James Nachtwey approached BD rather than the other way around. The chain of events doesn't much matter. What does matter to those with extreme drug resistant TB is that awareness be raised as broadly as possible.

Adding a MacGuffin to Your Cause Marketing Effort

Alfred Hitchcock, the legendary filmmaker, used to speak of a movies’ “MacGuffin” or plot device. “In crook stories it is always the necklace and in spy stories it is always the papers,” he said.

In short, a MacGuffin is a mechanical device that impels action. At left Humphrey Bogart is holding the MacGuffin that impelled action in John Huston’s classic movie The Maltese Falcon.

For Hitchcock, the MacGuffin was often no more than a device, one that he often neglected after the action got going. But I don’t use the term MacGuffin in such a fleeting way. When I use the word I mean, what in your cause marketing campaign will make the target audience act?

At first blush you might say that the cause or perhaps the offer is the MacGuffin. In the aftermath of the Haiti Earthquake, cause marketing campaigns sprouted up spontaneously and they worked. The cause was the MacGuffin.

The same could probably be said of several breast cancer charities and one or two environmental charities; the cause by itself impels action.

But not every charity that warrants a cause marketing campaign has enough punch, by itself, to impel action.

What might the MacGuffin be for charities like that?

It might be celebrity involvement. Superstar singer Christina Aguilera brings a lot of young people to the World Food Programme who might not otherwise pay attention to a cause like that. Same with Alicia Keyes and her charity work on behalf of Keep a Child Alive.

Feeding America’s had a awareness-raising campaign promoted by husband and wife Laila Ali and Curtis Conway with a MacGuffin built into it. The campaign, which used social media to call attention to the hunger crisis, had a sweepstakes component. The MacGuffin is that the sweepstakes winner got to personally present a check for $10,000 to their local food bank.

The MacGuffin could be the media component of the campaign. That, along with all the celebrities and breadth of scope, is the MacGuffin of the expansive RED campaign.

Now, a MacGuffin is no guarantee of success; not every Hitchcock film was a critical or popular success. Nor does the absence of a MacGuffin ensure failure.

But if your cause marketing campaign or social marketing effort is missing a MacGuffin, it will probably underperform. In other words, even if you have a cause that you think will pull just fine and an offer that your target market will likely respond to, you still may not be done.

You may need a MacGuffin, too.

Diluted Donations

The Bingham Canyon Mine in the southwest corner of the Salt Lake Valley in Utah where I live is said to be the deepest open-pit mine in the world. So deep you can see it from space. On the lip of the pit they have a visitor’s center along with spotting scopes to look into the void and at the mining activity. (The photo at left was taken from the International Space Station).

The mine, owned by Kennecott and its corporate parent Rio Tinto, charges a modest vehicle entrance fee that goes to the Kennecott Utah Copper Visitor’s Center Charitable Foundation, a 501(c)(3) private foundation which divvies it up the proceeds among local charities. There’s also a gift shop in the visitor’s center and proceeds from the sales of items there also benefits the Foundation.

The Foundation’s board, comprised of community members who serve without compensation, gets together annually to divvy up the proceeds among local charities which apply for grants. The year 2010 was a record year for the Foundation, it donated $186,000. To 106 local charities!

I’ve done the division and that amounts to an average of $1754.71 per charity. Except it’s not even that much since a few get larger grants than the average. The 2008 990, for instance, shows that the largest local food bank got $18,256. The local Volunteers of America chapter got $10,000 and the St. Vincent de Paul Center got $15,500, meaning there a lot of other local charities that got $1,000 or $500.

I’m not trying to paint Kennecott as a miserly corporate giver. On the contrary Kennecott is fairly generous corporate donor giving about $1 million per year apart from the Kennecott Utah Copper Visitor’s Center Charitable Foundation.

Kennecott is also the largest taxable entity in the Salt Lake Valley. Between taxes, wages and benefits, the company puts $900 million into the local economy. Moreover, by itself the mine produces 25 percent of the refined US copper production, 7 percent of the country’s refined gold, 10 percent of its refined silver and 23 percent of its molybdenum. Tiffany and Walmart buy their gold from Kennecott because on balance they think it’s the most responsibly-mined gold in the world, although local and national critics disagree.

The tax money is equalized among government entities and school districts across the Valley. In other words, the homeless shelter that receives money from local city governments probably benefited more financially from Kennecott’s taxation than from the grant they got from the Bingham Canyon Mine Visitor’s Center Foundation.

My question is, why does the Board divide its grant money so broadly? Why don’t they pick just one or maybe two recipients a year to receive the whole sum? The winning charity or charities would then be out of the running for another grant the next 50 years or so.

We all know that charities are hurting these days, but not many of them are going to miss $500 or $1,000, or even $1754.71, especially since they probably paid someone to write the grant.

By the same token, which of those 106 charities couldn’t figure out a way to effectively deploy a one-time grant of $186,000?

My New Favorite Cause Marketing Campaign

Although I surely come off as a homme du monde and maybe even a bon vivant, I confess that I spent the first nine years of my life in a tiny desert hamlet in the American Southwest where I lived across a dirt road from a large cotton field. I lived so close to the field and so far from town that many’s the morning I was woken up by crop duster airplanes.

My family had been city-folk for three generations before me. Still, as a boy I envied the handsome blue corduroy jackets worn by the members of the Future Farmer’s of America (FFA).

I missed this campaign from Campbell’s in 2009 and 2010 benefiting the FFA. But I came across it while working on the Alden Keene Cause Marketing Database. And though Campbell’s didn’t renew for 2011, it may be my favorite cause marketing campaign of the last few months.

Called Help Grow Your Soup, in 2010 the campaign restored five barns… chosen by popular vote by people inputting Campbell's Soup UPC codes… in Michigan, Indiana, Maryland and North Carolina. Five barns were also restored in 2009. Campbell’s underwrote the restoration of the barns and part of the labor was provide by local FFA chapters, alumni, and community groups.

In addition, Campbell donated a $1 per vote cast up to a maximum of $250,00. The maximum was met both years and Campbell's donated a grand total of $500,000 to the national FFA.

Of course there’s something wonderfully romantic about old barns, which is one reason to like this campaign. But more than that, Help Grow Your Soup shows a little love to the FFA, which along with 4-H is the last torch bearer for farming and the rural life to America’s young people.

And that’s important if, like me, you like to eat food and/or wear clothing made from natural fibers.

One of the great miracles of the last 100 years is the astonishing growth in productivity of farmland and farmers. The decade of the 1920s, when our great-grandparents and their parents were alive, was the first time in history when more Americans lived in urban areas than rural areas, a transition the world as a whole made in 2008.

As recently as the 1940 farmers represented 18 percent of the American labor force. Now that figure is less than 2 percent. In some States farmers are aging faster than the labor force as a whole. In other words, we need to raise a generation of young farmers to keep the miracle going, something the FFA (and, again, 4-H) is good at.

In terms of the ad itself, I like showing the genealogy of the young farmer. Genealogy is hot again and has always been one of the most common uses of the Internet.

But the overall creative for the ad seemed much more at home in Grit magazine, rather than Reader’s Digest.

As to the question of why Campbell's didn't renew, the website is vague. Certainly the FFA is an interesting partner; well-known within its silo of influence, but less so by average soup-eating Americans. Given that, I wonder if Campbell's activated the campaign as effectively as they needed to.

All quibbles aside, I find this campaign very appealing.

Ending a Cause Marketing Relationship

Normally, when it comes to cause marketing I would say that longer relationships are better for sponsor and charity. Think Rolling Stones and U2 not Cream or Soft Cell. That’s because cause marketing is a form of co-branding and like any branding endeavor it takes years to for brands to achieve high customer awareness. Frequently changing partners confuses your customers and stakeholders.

For instance, I guarantee you that even after more than 15 years or so of deep association, in a test of unaided recall few people would be able to identify that Subway Sandwiches and the American Heart Association are co-branded partners.

I’ve written before that lasting corporate-cause relationships are like marriages that require constant maintenance. Or like bank accounts whereto you must make frequent deposits to cover the inevitable withdrawals.

But there are times when it makes sense to end cause marketing relationships.

For causes it’s probably more so a dollars and cents issue than it is even for sponsoring companies.

In the United States and Canada where charities are granted tax exempt status by the IRS and Canada Revenue Agency and in England and Scotland with the status conferred to Registered Charities, it’s all but immoral for charities to remain involved with a campaign that costs the charity more than it generates. And any charity that remains in a relationship that is “unprofitable” will be rightly second-guessed by its board, the press, and the public.

But there are other reasons for charities or sponsors to “break up the band.”

• Scandal. When news emerged about the nature of the deal between the American Medical Association and Sunbeam, members of the AMA demanded that the deal be scotched even though doing so eventually cost the AMA some $16 million in court judgments and legal expenses (Sunbeam successfuly sued for breach of contract). The cost of scandal resulting from a bad deal, the AMA's board determined, was greater than the cost of the money.
• Bankruptcy. If you’ve got a sponsor that has declared bankruptcy it’s potentially an opportunity for a nonprofit partner. After all, in bankruptcy cost-cutting is only one-half of the way out. Companies must also sell their way out and cause marketing may have a role to play in such a scenario. But when a sponsor declares bankruptcy the responsible thing for the charity to do is to go to the sponsor and offer to let them out of their contract.
• Doesn’t work. What if you try every sort of permutation and still the campaign or relationship doesn’t work? Chances are it’s a bad fit (see below) but even if it just doesn’t work, you may need to end the deal.
• Bad match. Sometimes customers respond in ways you can’t predict and what seemed like a good fit really isn’t. For instance, it may seem like good deal linking a BBQ grill company with a safety charity. But if customers don’t get the connection, or the cause doesn’t, by itself, have enough affinity to overcome the disconnect, you may have a bad match.
• Colliding cultures. The sponsor might be too bleeding edge and the charity too staid. Or vice versa. I’ve seen both. Regardless, if the cultures of sponsors and charity don’t share some common ground, then the relationship may be doomed.

Twenty Questions Before Engaging in a Cause Marketing Effort

Suppose when you get into the office tomorrow, the boss comes in and says, “I think we need to look seriously at cause marketing. Look into it will you?”

Getting the right answers depends on asking the right questions. So where do you start?

Let’s just stipulate that you’ll search the Internet. Maybe check the entries at Wikipedia.com or About.com. You’ll almost certainly come across the Cause Marketing Forum. If you go a little deeper you may find Cone, or other agencies that specialize in the practice. You may find IEG, which has a long history with cause marketing, but considers it to be a subset of sponsorship. Maybe you’ll go to Amazon.com and check the available titles. You’ll almost certainly find Business in the Community in England, which takes a very holistic approach to cause marketing and Business for Social Responsibility, which is basically its opposite number Stateside.

Scratch the surface a little more and you’ll certainly find criticisms of the practice; usually variations on the theme that the money is tainted. I’m familiar with most of the criticisms. But I cut my cause marketing teeth in the charity world where the saying goes about donations: “‘taint enough.” It’s a fact that even Mother Teresa (a saint by my definition) cashed checks from Charles Keating.

Okay. So after an Internet search, what questions do you need to answer?

It depends… in part… on where you work.

Nonprofit. If you’re working for a charity, the first thing I’d do is try and gauge if your charity is ready for cause-related marketing. Is your board supportive? Does your mission already draw a broad base of ‘retail’ support? Do you have the staff time to devote to it? What are your goals? Are they to raise money? Or awareness? Or both? What benchmarks will tell you when you’ve succeeded? Is your mission competitive with an existing cause-related marketing giant? Do you have any potential conflicts? A lot of the health charities in the States have real conflict of interest problems doing cause marketing, especially with the pharmaceutical companies. Are you good with events? Do you have special access to social and oldline media?

Advertising or PR Agency. If you work for an advertising or PR agency I would start by asking who you expect your clients to be? Will you convert existing clients or use your newfound capacity as cause marketers to attract new clients? Do you have someone on staff with hands-on understanding of the basics of cause marketing? It’s not rocket science by any stretch of the imagination, but familiarity with the practice is a prerequisite. Do you have PR chops? More cause marketing in the States is driven by PR than advertising. Do you speak or can you learn guerilla marketing? If your client is on the nonprofit side, are you prepared to wrestle over every cost item? Are you good at events? Do you have special access to social and oldline media?

Corporate. If you work for a company (or maybe a government entity) then you need to ask who you match well with? Do you want your campaign to have the support of rank and file employees? Are you prepared to make a long-term commitment to the cause? You’ll get more bang for your if your relationship last for years. What are your goals? Do you have the sophistication to accurately measure a cause marketing campaign’s value? Are you good at events? Do you have special access to social and oldline media?

Notice the repeated questions: Are you good at events? Do you have special access to social and oldline media?

Cause marketing relies frequently on events. That’s as it should be. When well executed, events build stronger relationships with prospects and customers than anything besides interpersonal communications. And more than the mass media, PR, direct mail and even the Internet, events allow you to move from awareness and interest into commitment and action in one fell swoop.

As for the media question, cause marketing is little more than a parlor trick for marketers who don’t make good use of the media.

Unconventional Metrics of Cause Marketing Power

The printed edition of Fortune Magazine runs a regular feature called ‘My Metric’ wherein business leaders identify informal but telling measures of current economic activity.

In the January 17, 2011 Michael Glimcher, CEO of Glimcher Realty Trust cited as his metric an increased number of black cars on the streets of New York City as a sign of the U.S. economy’s (still pending?) resurgence.

That got me thinking, what unconventional metrics evidence the power of certain cause marketing efforts?

One immediately leapt to mind, although only General Mills, which makes Yoplait yogurt in the U.S., can measure it.

The Yoplait lid at left... which I purchased in December 2010... can NOT be redeemed for a $0.10 donation to Susan G. Komen for the Cure. Instead it promotes Yoplait’s sponsorship of Komen’s Race for the Cure events, which are numerous.

But I’d bet you a six-pack of Yoplait Greek Honey Vanilla that people nonetheless still send in some number of the lids above in an attempt to redeem them on behalf of Komen. The number of false redemption attempts therefore serve as a signal of customer loyalty to the lid campaign, even in those seasons when it isn’t active.

Now, I have no idea if General Mills tracks anything like false redemption attempts of Yoplait lids for Komen. But they should.

Finally, I had an enjoyable lunch yesterday afternoon with Clark Sweat, formerly of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and Children’s Miracle Network. Clark is one of the most thoughtful cause marketing practitioners in the business and he’s teaching classes at the Cause Marketing Forum in Chicago in June 2011. I’m not here to pimp for David Hessekiel’s Forum, but if you’re going do yourself a favor and sign up for Clark’s classes!

Cause Marketing as a Means of Employee Engagement

Cause marketing is often directed at employees and other internally stakeholders. Cause marketing can help build employee morale and loyalty, improve employee productivity, skills and teamwork and produce a pipeline of future talent.

One well-designed cause marketing effort that focuses closely on employee engagement comes from the Luxottica Group, the Italian eyewear company whose brands in the United States include Ray-Ban, Oakley and Revo along with retail outlets LensCrafters, Sunglass Hut, and Pearle Vision. OneSight, founded by Luxottica in 1988, is a public 501(c)(3) nonprofit charity that redistributes millions of eyeglasses a year in more than three dozen countries across the globe.

The World Health Organization estimates that 314 million people suffer from poor but correctable vision. Luxottica says it funds most of OneSight’s administrative costs such that 92 percent of public donations go to fund programs. Here’s a link to a list of OneSight’s extensive programs.

Luxottica offers employees the chance to volunteer…with pay…to work for OneSight. Their service might take place in the developing world or in low-income areas of the United States. Either way the service typically includes setting up free clinics, providing free eye exams, and fitting donated glasses to the needy.

I lifted the charming photo at the left from OneSight’s website. Pay special attention to the genuine Duchenne smiles on both women and it'll be clear that part of the benefit to Luxottica's employees is psychic. A Duchenne smile refers to a smile that is authentic and real. That is, you smile with your eyes rather than just with your mouth.

Writes Elliot Masie in the January 2011 issue of the magazine Chief Learning Officer, “I traveled to one of these clinics at a Fresh Air Camp outside of New York. Luxottica employees at every level took on new roles within the OneSight mobile clinic. Store clerks managed the mission while senior executives did clerical work, and it became clear that these stretch assignments were a major part of their work and were seen as opportunities for career development. Store employees and managers developed new skills, competencies and attitudes during their service weeks, which they brought back to their stores.”

As Masie points out, few companies have the worldwide breadth that Luxottica has… it operates in more than 125 countries. So not every employee engagement effort can scale the way Luxottica's does.

But almost every company and its employees could benefit from a well-designed, well-executed employee engagement campaign like Luxottica’s.

Adoption Cause Marketing at Wendy's

A visit to a Wendy’s in Mesa, Arizona early in January 2011 turned up this handbill for AASK-Arizona, an affiliate for the Wendy’s adoption program called Wendy’s Wonderful Kids in metropolitan Phoenix.

AASK stands for Aid to Adoption of Special Kids. The handbill was positioned on a counter near one of the doorways.

I like the front of the handbill. The four pictures of smiling Casey drew me in. But the copy on the back struck me as unpersuasive. See if you agree.

The first paragraph describes Wendy’s Wonderful Kids, an effort by Wendy’s to increase adoptions out of America’s foster care system.

The second paragraph describes that AASK as the affiliate of Wendy’s Wonderful Kids in Maricopa County, basically the greater Phoenix region.

So far, so good. The third paragraph is where I think the copy begins to lose its way:

“Through valuable media partnerships, including Wednesday’s Child, AASK is able to touch the hearts of thousands of potential parents annually.”

Wednesday’s Child is a weekly public service program that runs on local television stations in a number of markets in the United States and showcases kids up for adoption. So invoking Wednesday’s Child is kind of appeal to authority. Nothing wrong with that so long as Wednesday’s Child is respected in Arizona.

But it’s the second clause in that sentence that jumps out at me. Can “touching the hearts of thousands of potential parents annually” really be AASK’s goal?

Wendy’s Wonderful Kids stated goal is to increase the number of adoptive parents. Since AASK is an affiliate, you’d expect that their missions line up to some degree. But touching the hearts of parents is really just a means to an end.

Wouldn’t it be far better to cite the number of adoptive parents that AASK has helped? Or, if that number is relatively small, wouldn’t it be better to cite the number of parents in Arizona who have adopted special needs kids? Adoption probably seems like a hurdle to a lot of the people who might consider it. But if thousands of Arizonans are adopting special needs kids out of foster care, well then that’s a sign that maybe adoption isn’t as daunting as it might seem.

The fourth paragraph is no more persuasive.

“With its dedicated staff and commitment to placing more children, AASK is uniquely qualified to ensure that more of Arizona’s foster children have a safe home and a loving family.”

My bet is that AASK has competitors who would also claim to have dedicated staffs and a commitment to placing more children. So unique isn’t the right word. But AASK has been in business since 1988, which is no small feat. Charities that can’t fulfill their missions or make their cases to supporters don’t usually last 23 years.

The copy could also certainly back-reference Casey. We could learn more about what makes him special. Maybe he was adopted and his new parents could be quoted as saying how rewarding it is to have Casey in their family.

As tactical as all this sounds, Wendy’s has a strategic stake in all this. The AASK is Wendy’s Wonderful Kids partner in Arizona's largest market, and Wendy’s does the AASK a disservice by not helping make even a simple handbill as persuasive as it can be.

It's Not Transactional Cause Marketing, But It is a Cool Fundraiser

I define cause marketing as a "relationship that bridges cause and commerce in a way that benefits both parties."

By that definition the Cause Marketing blog isn’t about charity fundraisers per se. Still, I’ve come across a fundraiser in my home state… called Utah FastPass… that’s just so cool that I have to share it with you my faithful readers, even though it’s not precisely a cause marketing effort.

In 2006 the Utah Department of Public Safety and the Utah Highway Patrol closed a remote section of state highway and then sold access to wealthy drivers to drive their cars on the road at speeds the Devil himself wouldn’t chance, all for charity. The gimmick was that the Highway Patrol would give each driver a ‘ticket’ and they would pay the ‘fine’ to charity.

Naturally the drivers had to have very good insurance and sign a ream of waivers.

That first year one driver drove the closed course in a classic Ferrari Enzo like the one at the left and missed a bump or a turn or a shift… he doesn’t remember what happened exactly… and his Ferrari lifted off the ground and all but disintegrated when it landed.

The driver survived, but he spent a year under a neurosurgeon’s care. His beloved Ferrari spent even longer in reconstructive surgery.

But you’re thinking, game over for the Utah FastPass, right? In fact, no. The race continues only it has been moved to the Miller Motor Sports Park, a very fine local racetrack.

In its five years the Utah FastPass has generated $1.2 million for various Utah charities.

Not every state has either the racetrack facilities or the open road or a willing Highway Patrol. But for those that do, this is a fun idea.

People’s Choice Awards Gives it Up for Special Olympics

When actress-singer Vanessa Williams mounted the stage at the People’s Choice Awards January 5, 2011 it was on behalf of Special Olympics, the official charitable partner of the 2011 awards show.

The main benefit of the partnership for Special Olympics is that the People's Choice Awards gave up some of their precious airtime to ask for donations for the cause.

According to press reports, at 10:51 PM (eastern) Ms. Williams asked viewers to use their cell phones to donate $10 to Special Olympics. See the video footage above. Donations were processed by mobilecause.com.

The ad at the left promoting the appearance came from Proctor & Gamble's annual FSI on behalf of Special Olympics, which dropped on December 26, 2010.

I didn’t see Ms. Williams' appearance. Aside from the presidential debates and occasional viewings of the show 'Nature' on PBS, we don’t watch television at Chez Jones. But this represents another high-profile use of using television to advertise text to donate. The United Way got a similar, if briefer, treatment during the 2008 and 2009 Super Bowls.

Ms. Williams, who went from a star turn on the network TV show Ugly Betty to the network TV Show Desperate Housewives this year, has an longstanding relationship with Special Olympics.

Special Olympics knew within minutes whether or not Ms. Williams' pitch was an effective fundraiser. My recollection is that the 2009 United Way ad did less than $50,000, although text to donate ads do very well in Europe and Asia.

I like these text to donate direct response efforts. But if they have a problem it is that they don’t have much staying power. Ms. Williams’ appeal will have a second life on YouTube, but it will only be seen once by a large audience. This kind of appeal is not like other kinds direct response television like infomercials, which air many, many times.

Let's Do the First QR Coded Paper Icon Cause Marketing Campaign Together

This paper icon… which I purchased for $1 at Bashas’, an Arizona grocery chain… made it very clear to me that charities doing paper icon cause marketing campaigns are going to need to differentiate or risk being commoditized out of existence by the retailers themselves.

The full-color icon benefits a new orangutan enclosure at the Phoenix Zoo. The icon is 5½” x 8½” and was sitting on the checkout counter. I couldn’t see any hanging in the store in Mesa, Arizona where I bought it or any other kind of collateral material explaining the campaign. Nor did the clerk try to “sell” me the icon or amplify any aspect of the campaign. The back of the paper icon was blank.

But I was impressed that the icon featured the beneficiary, a cute little orangutan. Too many charities are still selling sneakers and balloons and shamrocks even though their beneficiaries are adorable little human children.

Bashas’, which has done paper icon campaigns for other charities, seems to have learned some lessons in so doing. One of those lessons almost certainly is that the retailer sits in a position of power in paper icon campaigns.

And they’re right. Bashas’ has 160 stores in Arizona. If an average of 416 people shop each of their stores a day, that’s a potential audience of 2 million people a month.

Bashas’ may have looked at paper icons for charities and said, “all these campaigns are is some printing, a charity, and our cash registers.” Since larger grocery chains have their own print shops… and their own 501(c)(3) charities… the barriers to entry for bigger retailers are pretty low.

How could a charity bring something to new to differentiate its campaign and head off competition from the grocers/retailers themselves?

I’ve already suggested that no paper icon campaign is using QR codes. So has Joe Waters on his blog Selfish Giving. But imagine all you could do with QR codes in a paper icon campaign:

• Augmented reality images on smart phones.
• Links to websites or microsites.
• Promotions and co-promotions.
• Contests and sweepstakes.
• Links to video presentations.
• Giveaways to donors who buy $5 icons.
• Facebook/Twitter interfaces.
• Plus, a lot more that I haven’t thought of yet

Could grocers/retailer pull this off themselves?

Eventually, sure. But the first charity that takes a cool QR code paper icon promotion to even the biggest grocers… Kroger and Walmart… won’t have to worry about competition from the retailers themselves for a while to come.

When you’re ready to kick this idea into high gear call my company, Alden Keene and Associates. I really want to help launch the first QR code paper icon cause marketing campaign!

Matching Cause and Sponsor in Cause Marketing

Today we return to the subject of matching cause and sponsor and cause marketing.

Without resurrecting every post I’ve written on the topic there’s basically seven approaches for sponsors…

1. Pick a cause that’s a direct fit: for instance, a restaurant or a grocery store sponsoring a food bank.
2. Pick a cause that’s an indirect but related fit: McDonald’s sponsorship of the Ronald McDonald House.
3. Pick a cause that’s meaningful to company stakeholders: Many sponsors of the various breast cancer charities fit this criteria.
4. Pick a cause that has tons of popular appeal: Target’s sponsorship of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital is an example.
5. Split the baby and pick multiple charities but with a single theme. JC Penney focuses much of its giving on after-school causes, for instance.
   
6. Pick multiple charities without a unifying theme.
7. Pick a charity the CEO or executive staff likes.
8. Pick a charity for no rational reason.

Looking at this campaign from July 2009 benefiting Mother’s Against Drunk Driving, I’m not so sure that OXY, an over-the-counter acne treatment, doesn’t fall under approach number eight.

Democratized Cause Marketing With a Lower Price of Entry

American Express has its Member’s Project and Pepsi has Pepsi Refresh, both of which award millions of dollars in prizes and cost perhaps two to three times as much to activate, promote and administer. But can smaller sponsors do this voter-driven democratized cause marketing in a way that is both in reach and effective?

One sponsor that’s trying is Redwood Creek, a wine brand owned by Frei Bros Vineyards of Modesto, California, with its promotion called the Great Outdoors Project.

The Great Outdoors Project awards a top prize of $50,000 to a nonprofit organization “to use towards specific environmental projects that aim to preserve, protect and provide access to the great American outdoors.” $90,000 more is split between nine other finalists.

So figure that Redwood Creek is into this $140,000 in prizes and perhaps another $420,000, give or take to activate and administer the promotion. That’s perhaps $560,000 total. Not inexpensive, but certainly within reach for companies that do as little as $5 million or so in business and which spends 12-15 percent of sales on marketing.

The 2010 winner was the Arizona Trail Association to help reconstruct a portion of the Arizona Trail, a trail that stretches across the State from Mexico to Utah. The 2009 winner was the Friends of New Orleans City Park.

I’ve never been able to wholly embrace these voter-driven cause marketing campaigns.

I like the idea of the democracy inherent in them. But it’s possible to cheat on the contests and there’s something unseemly about asking charities to so blatantly compete against each other. And I say that knowing full well that charities compete against each other every day.

These kinds of voter-driven efforts also illustrate the classic ‘Matthew Effect.’ That is, the rich tend to get richer and the poor tend to get poorer. Think about it. Two nonprofit organizations both have good, if different ideas, about how to spend Pepsi Refresh money. Only one of the organizations also has a database of 150,000 email addresses and the capability of reaching out to them. Which one is likely to get more online votes?

Still, if you’re in the market for a voter-driven cause marketing campaign, Redwood Creek offers an intriguing example to model your campaign on that doesn’t require millions of dollars.