Cause Marketing Your Wedding Like the Royal Couple

Prince William and his espoused, Catherine Middleton, will wed today at Westminster Abbey in London. It’s a joyous time for the young couple that has inspired lovers and romantics across the globe, along with the usual amount of commerce and, even better, some charity.

You can, for instance, get a knock-off of Kate’s engagement ring, reproductions of the pretty frocks that she wears so well, even a collectible version of the carriage that will take them past St. James’s Park, Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament and finally to Buckingham Palace for the wedding reception. Plus about a cajillion other really cheesy keepsakes and mementos.

You, too, can also use your wedding to do what the Royal Couple is doing and give to a number of causes. Here’s how the official Royal Wedding website puts it:

“Having been touched by the goodwill shown to them since their engagement, they have asked that anyone wishing to send them a wedding gift consider doing so in the form of a donation to the fund.”

Couples are increasingly choosing an option like this; some because they are people of means like the Royal Couple, others just don’t need all the traditional items to set up their household together. Count my wife and me in that group. We were both in our 30s when we got married and just didn’t need that much ‘stuff.’

You could certainly go to the extent that William and Kate have and set up a website that can process online donations in five or six currencies to specific charities. Barring that, you could just ask people to pledge charitable donations to causes in lieu of gifts.

There’s another option with a distinctly cause marketing flavor. Givingpal.com allows you to create a wedding registry using bookmarklets at five online stores… Amazon, Macy’s, Target, The Knot, and Cooking.com. When people buy gifts for you through Givingpal, it makes a donation of 2% to 6.5% to a cause or causes you designate.

The process is super easy for both the betrothed and would-be givers. And, of course, entirely online.

For my part I’m sending the Royal Couple a nicely-framed quote from the book A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court from the great American writer Mark Twain:

“I urged that kings were dangerous. He said, then have cats. He was sure that a royal family of cats would answer every purpose. They would be as useful as any other royal family, they would know as much, they would have the same virtues and the same treacheries, the same disposition to get up shindies with other royal cats, they would be laughable vain and absurd and never know it, they would be wholly inexpensive, finally, they would have as sound a divine right as any other royal house...The worship of royalty being founded in unreason, these graceful and harmless cats would easily become as sacred as any other royalties, and indeed more so, because it would presently be noticed that they hanged nobody, beheaded nobody, imprisoned nobody, inflicted no cruelties or injustices of any sort, and so must be worthy of a deeper love and reverence than the customary human king, and would certainly get it.”

Cause Marketing from El Presidente

CITGO, the oil refiner and gasoline marketer faces a number of brand challenges. Is there a place here for cause marketing?

The average gas price in the United States is currently $3.88 a gallon, according to a report in yesterday’s USA Today, with at least half a dozen states reporting $4 a gallon gas.

Unlike our compatriots in Europe, Americans are entirely unaccustomed to high gasoline prices. It’s no exaggeration to say that President Obama’s chances of reelection in 2012 hinge, in part, on how high fuel prices stay. Pundits suggest that if gas prices nationwide in November 2011 are above $4, President Obama’s chances aren’t good.

CITGO has been owned in its entirety since 1990 by Petroleos de Venezuela, the Venezuelan state-owned petroleum company. CITGO, therefore, is effectively controlled by Hugo Chavez, the autocratic president of Venezuela who has no love for the United States, and who has expressed his feelings about the USA frequently and venomously.

Moreover, CITGO has been poor steward of the public’s trust in its refinery operations. According to Wikipedia, the company’s American refineries have violated the Clean Air Act, released illegal levels of benzene, a known carcinogen, and released hydrofluoric acid after a fire at the same refinery.

Not surprisingly to battle that trifecta of bad PR CITGO has an expensive-looking corporate image campaign, including the ad from Time magazine above. But the campaign looks slickest at Fuelinggood.com.

At the site, there’s all kinds of stories about local causes CITGO and its dealers have helped. CITGO also has an existing relationship of some standing with the Muscular Dystrophy Association.

At CITGO’s home site they trumpet their fuel oil program that benefits the poor and donations to Simon Bolivar Foundation. Chavez fancies himself a modern heir to the great Libertador.

Is it enough?

I don’t live in CITGO’s service area so I am largely uninfluenced by donations to local charities in Texas, Florida, and the rest of the Southeast. Moreover, I have a jaundiced view of Hugo Chavez.

But for me, CITGO’s efforts don’t seem like enough. I can be had after all. But I'm not cheap!

Good Cause Marketing Idea, Wrong Time of Year

Project Potential from Kraft's ready-to-eat meal brand Lunchables sounds like a wondrous effort. In the ad at the left from the May 2010 Glamour magazine, a little girl is said to be leaping from princesshood to… maybe… the presidency thanks to Project Potential.

And what is Project Potential? The ad promises to send 50 entire classrooms on fieldtrips.

I suppose that a class fieldtrip could help someone fulfill their potential.

Peter Parker got bit by a radioactive spider on a class fieldtrip and became Spiderman after all!

Says the website: “It's not a reach when their potential is so great. That's why we're dedicated to providing kids with as many academic learning opportunities as possible—to help them reach their full potential! Every time you buy LUNCHABLES Lunch Combinations, you're supporting our efforts to help kids realize just how far they can go in life.”

Wow! No wonder I’m such a schlub. I didn’t go on enough fieldtrips as a schoolchild.

Listen, I’m having some fun at Kraft’s expense. I don't mean to suggest that fieldtrips aren’t worthwhile or that kids don’t go on enough of them. Kids and adults are more likely to learn better when they come at their subjects from many sides.

And I love museums. I’d sooner spend a day at the Louvre, or the Uffizi or the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum than almost anything else I can think of.

The real problem with Project Potential is that Kraft and Lunchables is doing this at the wrong time of the year.

American students, we frequently hear, trail the developed world in academic achievement as measured by standardized tests. And despite the often overheated rhetoric about inadequate teachers, or bad curricula, or dumb kids, much of the blame for this achievement gap can be laid at the feet of the long summer break that American schoolchildren get.

American kids, even from the poorest areas, learn fine during the school year. Where poor American kids fall behind is during the long summer months off. Put simply, poor kids are unlikely to read or do math or progress academically during the summer. So when they come back in the fall, they suffer from what academics call “summer learning loss” or “summer slide.”

(Schoolchildren in Asia are less likely to suffer from summer learning loss because their school years are longer.)

American kids from middle and upper incomes are less likely to suffer as severely from the summer slide. That’s because they’re more likely to read, go to special learning camps, museums, and the like during the summer.

In short, Kraft has a germ of an idea. They’re just coming at it in the wrong season.

Project Potential shouldn’t be about sending school kids on fieldtrips during the school year. It should be about sending kids from summer community programs on fieldtrips.

Outré Cause Marketing?

Bear Grylls, the eat-anything host of the Discovery Channel’s hit show Man vs. Wild (called Born Survivor in the U.K.), recently endorsed a compact knife for Boy Scouts, sold by American knife maker Gerber. A special sale of the knife at the SHOT Show (Shooting Hunting Outdoor Trade) in January 2011 in Las Vegas generated $22,000 for the Cascade Pacific Council in Northwest Oregon, where Gerber is headquartered.

I saw the item in Outdoor USA Magazine... seen in the upper right hand column... a trade publication for the outdoor retailing industry, and was just a little surprised. Not by Bear Grylls endorsing a product; the adventurer has been pitching stuff in the U.K for years. I’m not surprised by the Boy Scout connection; he’s the Chief Scout of The Scout Association in the U.K., the youngest person to ever hold that position.

What surprised me was that Gerber did a cause marketing campaign for the Boy Scouts, which has been rather outré for more than a decade now. While 110 million Americans have been Boy Scouts since 1910, myself included, the Boy Scouts pointedly does not allow known or avowed homosexual or atheists or agnostics as employees or volunteers, although Scouts themselves can be either so long as they don’t hold youth leadership positions.

As a result the BSA has been a lightning rod for litigation and boycotts for years. The litigation mainly ended with the ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court Boy Scouts of America v. Dale. In 2000 the high court found that as a private organization the Boy Scouts of America enjoyed Freedom of Association, meaning the Scouts can make membership rules as they see fit, including discriminating against gay and atheist leaders.

But the boycotts remain firmly entrenched. The search term Boycott Boy Scouts of America generates 718,000 results on Google, although some of those results are for boycotts of former sponsors of the BSA.


Boycotts or not and outré or not, the BSA still has 114,000 units, 2.7 million youth members and 1 million adult leaders. Only a handful of youth organizations in the United States can claim a larger membership base. And like few other youth organizations, Boy Scouts need gear. And making outdoor gear is Gerber’s business. And Bear Grylls is a wonderfully authentic endorser.

To be fair, the BSA isn’t the only cause ever to be boycotted. The search term Boycott Susan G. Komen generates 156,000 results on Google.

Nonetheless, Gerber walks a knife’s edge with its cause efforts on behalf of the BSA.

Easter Cause Marketing

Let’s try a cause marketing thought experiment.

Suppose you’re a dominant retail player in a growing $30 billion segment. Suppose your founder and CEO was ranked number 147 on the 2011 Forbes list of richest Americans, with an estimated net worth of some $2.5 billion. Suppose you had 435 outlets in 35 heartland states. Suppose you have your own in-house ad agency and a history of advertising both weekly specials along with image campaigns that you run on certain holidays.

Now suppose your company is avowedly Christian and everybody knows it.

Should you do Christian-themed cause-related marketing? If yes, who would your partners be?

This thought was sparked by the ad above placed on Easter Sunday in newspapers all over its service area by Hobby Lobby, the privately-held retailer founded and owned by David Green, age 69.

Since confession is good for the soul, let me confess that I’ve never seen cause marketing in my local Hobby Lobby store.

But the ad… which hearkens back a time 35 years ago when every newspaper in America would print a Christian sermon on Easter Sunday… made me wonder if Hobby Lobby could or should do Christian cause marketing.

A few more pertinent facts. Hobby Lobby is one of the few retailers of its size in America that still observes the traditions of the blue laws and doesn’t open its stores on Sunday. Another avowedly Christian retailer, fast food chain Chick-fil-A, still observes blue law traditions as well.

Hobby Lobby's Statement of Purpose includes the following:

"Honoring the Lord in all we do by operating the company in a manner consistent with Biblical principles.

"Offering our customers an exceptional selection and value.

"Serving our employees and their families by establishing a work environment and company policies that build character, strengthen individuals, and nurture families.

"Providing a return on the owners' investment, sharing the Lord's blessings with our employees, and investing in our community.

"We believe that it is by God's grace and provision that Hobby Lobby has endured. He has been faithful in the past, we trust Him for our future."

Hobby Lobby lists on its website the ministries it supports among them the Bible translation charity Wycliffe, Oral Roberts University, and a "Christ-centered boarding school" for troubled kids called Harbor House.

Finally, Hobby Lobby gets so many requests for help from charities and worthy individuals and institutions that it feels compelled to post this disclaimer on its website:

"Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. would like to be able to donate to all of the wonderful communities, ministries and organizations in our area. However, due to the over ten thousand requests that we receive yearly, this is just not a possibility. Because of this, Hobby Lobby has decided to give a special 10% discount on merchandise sold to churches, schools and national charitable organizations when they purchase items with an organizational check or credit card. Please see your local store manager in regards to obtaining this discount."

Given all this, could or should Hobby Lobby take on Christian cause marketing relationships and campaigns in their stores?

I think they could, but they’d have to be very careful about what the promoted products are and who their charity partners are. Otherwise there could be some denominational problems. As for prospective charity partners it seems to me that their best bet might be international relief and organizations, since Christian relief has such a strong and well-known record abroad. That said, Hobby Lobby does not have a history of relationships with relief organizations, Christian or not.

But should they? My answer is yes again, if it’s right. Hobby Lobby’s statement of purpose includes operating on Biblical principles like charity and strengthening employee’s lives. The right cause marketing campaign could do both.

Just What is Corporate Social Responsibility?

What do people mean these days when they speak of corporate social responsibility?

Does it mean extracting sea turtles out of fishing nets or not eating monoculture salmon? Does it mean not out-sourcing jobs to cheaper foreign lands even if it raises the standard of living in those places? What if the outsourced jobs go to foreign union members? A friend maintains that his H-1 Hummer, which he expects to drive for 20 years, has less negative effect on the environment than a shiny new Nissan Leaf, which will last only until its batteries die. Is he right? Is it more socially responsible for a company to donate to an AIDS orphan cause in Africa than to a ballet company in Africa? What if the ballet company in Africa employs AIDS victims or does a benefit for AIDS victims?

Some of these questions are ethical questions and most of us aren't ethicists. So how are we supposed to navigate the thicket of sometimes competing and oftentimes perplexing conundrums framed as issues of corporate social responsibility?

This was all so much easier when “the business of America [was still] business,” to paraphrase the former U.S. President Calvin Coolidge (1923-1929).

I am, however, a marketer. And in marketing one way to learn where you stand with important stakeholders is to ask them. It won’t necessarily yield perfect moral clarity, but it can suggest pathways.

Fleishman-Hillard, a public relations firm and division of media giant Omnicom, in conjunction with the National Consumers League conducted three studies on the subject of corporate social responsibility from 2005 to 2007.

I read the executive summary for the 2007 study and if you can get past the laughably inaccurate renderings of the bar charts and the occasional editorializing in the summary... which has been no small hurdle for me... there may be something here for cause marketers.

What does “corporate social responsibility” mean? Fleishman-Hillard asked consumers just that as an open-ended, unprompted question. A truncated list of responses from the 2007 survey released in May 2007 included the following:

• Commitment to communities—23 percent
• Commitment to employees—17 percent
• Responsibility to the environment—11 percent
• Provide quality products—10 percent
• More charitable donations—1 percent
• Don’t know—9 percent

What contributions do consumers expect from companies? Again, the truncated list included:

• Non-financial contributions—29 percent
• No expectations—13 percent
• Treating employees well—11 percent
• Fixing problems created by company—11 percent
• Doing a good job—11 percent
• Environmentally-friendly practices—10 percent
• Financial contributions—10 percent

What to make of these low numbers when it comes to corporate charitable donations? The authors of the study’s executive summary surmise that:

“…the consistent findings across both the 2006 and 2007 CSR surveys, when it comes to defining the meaning and expectations surrounding CSR, suggest that companies’ charitable and philanthropic giving is no longer enough to impress consumers. Perhaps it is now viewed as a standard expectation that consumers have — a bare minimum requirement — to even be considered as a socially responsible company.”

They’re suggesting that there’s a kind of market price for corporate social responsibility and that consumers have already factored corporate generosity to charity into that price.

According to the Fleishman-Hillard study, what is likely to move the needle for consumers when it comes to corporate social responsibility is self interest.

When asked what is most important to consumers with regard to corporate social responsibility the top vote getter with 29 percent was ‘treats/pays employee well.’ If England is a nation of shopkeepers then the U.S. is a nation of employees. And the survey's respondees internalized the question and answered it as employees.

That's easy to see right now. Unemployment in the United States was about 8.6 percent in March 2011. But back when unemployment Fleishman-Hillard asked the question in 2007 unemployment was right about 4.5 percent.

For cause marketers I think the take-home is that our cause marketing campaigns must be more mindful of employees.

Volunteer. It’s Good for Your Heart!

A special issue of U.S. News & World Report magazine, in November 2010, tells the story of Brooke Ellison, who was left a quadriplegic at age 11 after being stuck by a car. She went on to be the first quadriplegic graduate of Harvard and is now working on her PhD in sociology at Stony Brook University.

(A movie about her life was directed by Christopher Reeve, his last project. You can watch the movie's trailer at the left.)

She’s not bitter in part because she makes a habit of extending herself to others.

Volunteers like Brooke garner physical and emotional rewards. Studies show that no matter what their health is when they start, volunteers have less stress, less depression, and longer lives.

“Helping is an independent, unique predictor of reduced risk of mortality,” says Stephanie Brown of the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan. Brown studied 400 elderly couples over a 5-year period and found volunteers were half as likely to die as nonvolunteers, even after adjusting for baseline health, age and mental health.

What does this mean for cause marketers?

It means you have another benefit of cause marketing to sell participants. 'Volunteer to help,' you can legitimately tell people, 'and you may live longer!'

Cause Marketing Earth Day at Lowe's

When I saw this circular in yesterday’s mailbox from Lowe’s I was puzzled. It looks like cause marketing effort themed to Earth Day, but there was no further explanation anywhere in the circular.

My first reaction was, “please, Lowe's, don’t do this on your own. You won’t get it right." A million tree giveaway in time for Earth Day oughta be done in partnership with the Arbor Day Foundation or with the charity American Forests.

So I Googled ‘Lowe’s Million Tree Giveaway’ and low and behold Lowe’s IS partnered with American Forests. The press release went out Monday and it’s an admirable campaign.

The million trees are indeed free from Lowe’s and optimized for your growing zone. You can point your smartphone at a 2D barcode on each tree bag to get tree facts, how to plant the sapling, how to care for it, and the like. The press release also says you can also register the sapling at lowes.com/earthday.

Why would you want to register your tree?

The press release says that registering the tree will allow you “to see where other trees are being planted across the country.” But while that offers registrants a measure of social proof, it seems a little thin and unpersuasive. What if registrants instead could be entered into a sweepstakes for ecotourism vacation to Costa Rica? Or to volunteer, all expenses paid, for some kind of forest remediation project undertaken by American Forests?

At any rate, I couldn’t find the registration functionality at the URL. Between that and the fact the America Forests logo is missing from the circular above, I wonder if Lowe’s has all its saplings in order in this otherwise intriguing campaign.

Earth Day has a Messaging Problem

Friday, April 22 is the 41st Earth Day in the United States, a day that was originally conceived as a kind of environmental ‘teach-in.’

But I think it’s fair to say that most Americans understood those first few Earth Days not as a ‘teach-in’ but as a reminder to clean up litter, as the poster at the left from the great cartoonist Walt Kelly underscores.

America made great strides against litter. After that it made great strides against air pollution, and water pollution. The country still has litter and air and water pollution. But air pollution in particular is now better than it was in, say, December 1970, when the Environmental Protection Agency was founded.

National carbon monoxide emissions are not quite a third of what they were in 1970. Ammonia emissions are lower now than then, so are nitrogen oxides, particulates, sulfur dioxides, and volatile organic compounds.

Both surface water and groundwater are cleaner than they were in 1970 thanks to the Clean Water Acts and the Safe Drinking Water Act. This despite the fact that the U.S. population has grown by 105 million people since 1970.

Let me be clear, neither our air nor our water is yet what Americans want it to be, and the country still creates too much waste. I’m not arguing that we need to take the foot off of the accelerator in our efforts to take care of our planet.

All I’m saying is that what we’ve done up until now in three key areas has led to marked improvements.

My problem with Earth Day as it’s presently constituted is that there’s too many emphases for people to keep in their heads. Earth Day is markedly more sophisticated in 2011 than it was in 1970. Trouble is, we've still got the same human brains we've always had.

The Earth Day Network website lists 15 campaigns of emphasis: School Greenings Across the USA; Building the Climate Movement; A Billion Acts of Green®; The Green Generation™; Green Economy; Earth Day-India; The Canopy Project; Athletes for the Earth; Arts for the Earth; No Child Left Inside; National Civic Education Project; Healthy Schools Act; Green Schools; The Road to Rio™; Women and the Green Economy.

I was so turned off by the number that I didn’t even bother checking what they were about.

The Kellogg’s Earthday Sweepstakes website, highlighted in the FSI (free-standing insert) at the left, has a rotating banner that lists no less than 20 things we could do as individuals to improve the environment.

My Earth Day friends, this is too much. I know the earth’s environment is a system and that a lot of improvements need to be made and made quickly.

But just as the human mind has place for two colas (in America it’s Coke and Pepsi)…two smart phone operating systems; Apple and Android…two late night talk show hosts; Letterman and Leno and two beer companies; Budweiser and Miller… it has room for no more than two environmental goals at a time.

And don’t come back to me with the exceptions.

Environmentalists really don’t want to occupy the amount of space reserved in the human mind for Pabst, Dr. Pepper, and the Symbian OS.

This is made worse by the complicated calculus of environmentalism. Trees for instance, are good because the soak up greenhouse gasses. Until they die, decompose and release their carbon and then they’re bad. Compact fluorescent lights are good because they produce good light with less power and (usually) last longer than filament light bulbs. Until they fail at which point they have to be carefully disposed of because they contain trace amounts of mercury, which is a toxic heavy metal.

Even paper versus plastic is no slam dunk. In places where plastic grocery bags are banned what usually results is an increase in the number of plastic garbage can liners sold. Turns out plastic grocery bags tend to get a second life as garbage bags.

Here’s my plea to the Earth Day organization and environmentalists everywhere; pick two things and keep hitting them until those two things are better. Then move to the next two things on the list. America is better off environmentally than it was on that first Earth Day 41 years ago. And it can get better still. But you gotta message it smarter.

And smarter messaging means fewer concurrent goals.

Activating Your Cause Marketing Campaign

Activation in sponsorship, and by extension cause marketing, means the stuff you do to promote the sponsorship.

Activation is an exceedingly broad idea. It could mean everything from jumping out of airplane with a banner attached to your feet, to advertising or earned media on radio and TV, to email, to social media like Facebook, to signage and out of home advertising.

(The old sitcom WKRP in Cincinnati, which was about a radio station, once activated a promotion by dropping live turkeys from a helicopter at Thanksgiving. The results were comically tragic. Watch the classic episode from 1978 here.)

At left is an activation of a cause campaign in front of a local Sizzler restaurant, at the intersection of two busy streets. The campaign itself… called Cops for Kids… is a tried and true fundraiser; cops from three local police departments will serve you and bus your tables during your visit to one of three local Sizzler restaurants on April 19, 2011.

The money from tips will go to the Children’s Justice Center. The Children’s Justice Center is a place where ‘children receive coordinated services during the child abuse investigative process.’

It used to be that sponsorship activation was mainly the responsibility of the sponsor. But in this age of free social media, that's no longer the case.

The Children’s Justice Center, for instance, did at least three other things to activate the sponsorship; they issued a media release and a really shaky video news release, both of which can be seen on their website. They also posted the event to their Facebook page. I presume they sent some kind of email to their list, too.

If the fundraiser generates much less than $10,000, what the Children’s Justice Center has done to activate the sponsorship is about all they can justify in doing.

I think that the Sizzler franchisee(s) could do more. In terms of the fundraiser itself, they could do some kind of matching effort. They could offer coupons for the event only. Maybe they could offer a dessert or specialty menu item with the proceeds going to the Children’s Justice Center.

Sizzler could certainly do things to activate the sponsorship beyond the sign out front. They could do in-store advertising with table tents, 'talkers,' handbills, and the like. They could offer customers some kind of bounce-back pricing whereby if you bought a meal at Sizzler within the last 15 days or so, if you came back on April 19, you’d get some special offer.

The cops, too, could activate the sponsorship by bringing their cars on April 19 and running the lights and pointing their spotlights on the sign above. They could draw on the local Fraternal Order of Police lodges for support. They could also send out notices to their compatriots in their respective city governments.

Cause Marketing Customer Satisfaction Surveys

The other day I bought a paper icon at a chain drugstore. The icon has a bar code and the clerk scanned it and handed me a receipt as we finished the transaction. At the bottom of the receipt was an 800-number keyed to a customer satisfaction survey. Dial the number, answer some questions and I’m entered into a drawing for $10,000.

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. The satisfaction survey at a regional seafood restaurant gives me a code that garners a free dessert when I complete their survey. Finish Home Depot’s survey and you’re entered to win a $5,000 gift card good at the retailer.

As I left the store I thought, ‘they know I just bought a paper icon. Instead of offering me and other people who buy the icon the chance to win $10,000, why wouldn’t they offer to donate $2 (or more!) to the cause in question whenever someone completes the survey?’

Why haven’t I ever seen this kind of cause marketing?

Cause marketing all about encouraging certain human behaviors in exchange for helping a cause that people care about. Framed that way customer satisfaction surveys qualify as natural fit for cause marketing.

My purchase of the paper icon demonstrates that I have some affinity for the cause in question. It’s not a big sweaty ordeal to write a couple of lines of code in order to change the pitch at the bottom of the receipt when I've purchased an icon.

Time is off the essence with these surveys. But since (according to the Cellular Telecommunications International Association) about 302 million Americans are wireless subscribers, retailers could even offer some sort of sliding scale whereby the sooner you call, the greater the donation, e.g.:

• Answer the survey within 12 hours and the donation is $5.
• Answer the survey within 24 hours and the donation is $3.
• Answer the survey within 36 hours and the donation is $2.

The only real challenge would be explaining it simply enough in 30 words or less.

Most of these surveys can also be completed online, too. The retailer could probably even run the survey through Facebook and garner all the data it gathers. Online customer satisfaction surveys represent another chance to do some cause marketing and, perhaps, some marketing for the cause.

What do you think? Would you respond to a campaign like this? What would make it more appealing to you?

Back to Back Cause Marketing With Bond, James Bond

The May 2011 issue of Conde Naste Traveler magazine has the rather unusual distinction of having two cause marketing efforts advertised literally back to back, both of which feature actors who have played James Bond.

The first ad, from the luxury-goods manufacturer and style-setter Louis Vuitton, has been around for a few years and features the best Bond, Sean Connery. The benefiting cause is The Climate Project, founded by Nobel Laureate Al Gore.

In the second ad current Bond Daniel Craig pitches Omega, the Swiss watchmaker. The Omega ad calls attention to the cause Orbis International, which flies a hospital plane into the developing world to perform essential eye surgeries where it lands.

Both ads are short on the specifics of the cause marketing they’ve engaged in. But that’s par for the course when luxury goods utilize cause marketing. Instead the most prominent elements of both ads are their respective Bonds, their exclusive brands, and their tie to the causes.

Oh, and the Vuitton ad was shot by celebrity photographer Annie Leibovitz.

I’m not going to parse this out any farther. Instead I’m just going to say that as a long-time fan of Bond and practitioner of cause marketing I never expected to see two different actors who have both played James Bond pitching two different cause marketing campaigns in the same magazine.

Such is the distance that cause marketing has come.

Cause Marketing You Can Sew Believe In

Cecily Eastwood of Oxfordshire, England was teaching school in Kitwe, Zambia when, just a few months into her gap year, the 19-year-old was tragically killed in a road accident.

In her memory, her parents established Cecily’s Fund, a registered charity which works to support the education of children orphaned by AIDS in and around Kitwe.

In support of the nonprofit called American Friends of Cecily’s Fund, the February 2010 issue of the magazine Sew News invited readers to sew and embroider grocery-store style totes according to a pattern provided online, and then send them to the charity’s US operations to be sold as a fundraiser. (Sew News does a charitable campaign like this yearly. In 2011 they're asking readers to sew lap quilts to benefit the Alzheimer's Association.)

I can imagine buying a handmade tote like this for my wife or daughters.

The goal was to create 1,000 totes. I couldn’t find any word on whether or not they hit their mark.

My heart loves this simple grassroots cause marketing effort, so emblematic of what’s right in this world. The people that participate have talent, fabric, a sewing machine, and time, and they give of themselves in a way that that is genuine, earnest, and wonderfully noncommercial.

There’s hope for a world that has people who sit down at their sewing tables to sew little acts of love like these totes.

But my head swims at the thought of 1,000 or so people sewing and then spending $4-$5 to ship their totes so that it could sell for, what, $20? I can imagine some that won’t sell at all. For that matter I can’t imagine how they will sell any of them.

The website of American Friends of Cecily’s Fund doesn’t have the horsepower to describe and display pictures of 1,000 totes. You certainly wouldn’t want to commoditize the totes by treating them as though they were interchangeable. After all, the point of the exercise is that the totes are all handmade and hand-decorated. One of the things Sew News called on readers to do was sew or embroider by hand Cecily’s Fund's simple logo on the tote.

Does American Friends of Cecily’s Fund sell the bags at arts and crafts fairs? If so they’d almost certainly have to pay a fee along with a percentage of the gross sales, cutting into the donation amount. They might get the totes in retail, but they'd have to give up half the retail price to the store. Plus, outside of the context of the cause, people probably wouldn't pay as much.

Maybe they sell them at American Friends of Cecily’s Fund events. But 1,000 bags would be quite a few for a small cause to swallow and liquidate even over the course of a year.

My heart wants to love this authentic and heartfelt effort. My head just won’t let it. So I’ll have to be satisfied by saying thank God for the good and decent people of this people world who respond to appeals like this.

Viva Cause Marketing!

Blogger’s note: It is with great pleasure that I bring you today’s post from guest blogger Jose Sanchez from Mexico City. Jose has a half-dozen years experience in cause marketing in North America’s second largest country. With this post, Jose gives us an update of where cause marketing has been in Mexico and what it’s future might be. Jose's Twitter handle is: @josemsanchez80.

If you're a cause marketing blog reader from a country other then the USA and would like to pen a guest post about cause marketing in your country like Jose has, please contact me: aldenkeene at gmail dot com.

A Glimpse at Cause Marketing in Mexico

It's 7 pm in Mexico City. You turn on the TV and hear a cacophony of social marketing and cause marketing messages.

• “Hello! I’m brand X and if you buy this magical product, you will help the…”,
  
• “This product is the work of the X community in Chiapas...”,
  
• “Today is the international day of.... and so, today the 20% of your ticket will be donated to...”,
  
• “Remember that brand Y is caring for your health, for the family”,
  
• “Prevention is the key...”,
  
• “Let’s recycle...”,
  
• “Today is the day for goals with cause….”

How times have changed. What was once considered as corporate responsibility or a way to reduce taxes is now seen as a strategic way for brands to build trust and loyalty with customers.

What’s accounts for the change? Is it good corporate citizenship? A desire to sell more using a great background story? To polish a brand identity? Or is it really about genuine caring about the future of the buyers and the communities where they live?

These are great questions for the distinctive Mexican market. So how is Cause Marketing changing things in this diverse country of 112 million people and 681,231 companies/brands?

It’s hard to be definitive. Here’s why:

After research and years spent in social and commercial markets, especially in consumer goods I can surely say that Cause Marketing is in a growth and awareness phase. By contrast, social marketing is not, which is remarkable thing to point out.

However, in Mexico Cause Marketing and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) are generally synonymous. That’s not because marketers in Mexico are still learning the benefits of cause marketing so much as it has to do with the culture of the brand marketers and companies in Mexico.

Some business sectors still believe that Marketing is equivalent to merchandising, sales is always a panacea, and partnerships with NGOs are important only to the degree that they can increase market share. In short, selling is marketing, and social good is CSR or social marketing for non-profits.

I still remember an interview with a brand manager from one of the most prominent national dairy products company in the country. He told me he wasn't interested in any cause marketing strategist or even a branding evangelist. He wanted only a marketer who can increase and maintain sales percentage with a decent market position, never mind brand image, promotions, social media, or social marketing program. It’s sad but true.

But it’s not as bad as it seems for cause marketing in Mexico.

In Mexico corporate relationships with NGOs usually goes one of two ways. Either they make direct corporate contributions or they conduct a joint venture with an NGO.

Certainly, these can be elements of cause marketing. But let’s get real: the best program or campaign will be one in which cause marketing is integrated into the brand’s core design. I’ll come back to that topic in a minute.

Joint Ventures are a common approach for brands that want to do a social campaign. It’s easy and comfortable for the brands and very little work since few have any internal social marketing capacity. Instead, they seek NGOs who have existing efforts already in place. That’s the corporate culture in Mexico. But it works and it helps both brands.

One of the most memorable campaign for Cause Marketing was the "Pink Futbol," where soccer balls were colored pink to send the message to women about the importance of regular breast self-exam. The campaign was an alliance between the Federacion Mexicana de Futbol and Fundacion Cim*ab (a NGO dedicated to raising awareness about breast cancer).

The campaign did more than raise awareness of the issue. It made an impact on both women and men (especially men) about the seriousness of breast cancer. Both organizations gained from the relationship. All the brands involved gained brand equity and the NGO made progress in the fight against breast cancer.

It also brought home the fact that anyone, whether the country’s favorite sport or the single individual can help make a better world.

This example reflects that while cause marketing in Mexico is making major strides among the biggest brands, it will take time to filter down to medium and small brands. There’s no lack of causes to work with. Obesity, poverty, sedentarism, maternal mortality, breast cancer, promotion of non-human rights, to name a few, are becoming major issues in Mexico where brands could help.

It’s not just about money. It’s about a real manifestation of the true and sincere connection between brands and consumers. It’s about brands being true to what they stand for when they ask consumers to spend their hard earned income.

In Mexico as in every other part of the world, cause marketing is a sincere commitment for the brands to use all the tools, channels and products as a way to change behaviors and help effective causes. When they do, everyone benefits.

Cause Marketing Last Year's Prom Dress

Every year tens of thousands of teens go to the prom and when it’s done the boys take their tuxes back to the rental shop and the girls tuck their prom dresses into the back of their closets.

A number of grassroots organizations have sprung up to get prom, quinceañera and other special occasion dresses out of the closets and on to the backs of girls who might not otherwise be able to afford a fancy dress for their special night. Hearst, the publisher of Seventeen magazine, has a website called Donatemydress.org, to serve as a kind of national information clearinghouse for girls looking to donate or receive donations of special occasion dresses.

As far as causes go, passing on prom dresses to girls who can’t afford them isn’t exactly curing cancer or feeding the hungry. But it is a wonderfully romantic idea. And I don’t mean romantic in the sense of horny teens in the back seat of a limo. I mean it in the sense of idealism.

It’s exactly the kind of idea that might really catch hold in one area of the country, but struggle in another. In short, it’s so grassroots, by itself it defies being turned into a national effort. Donatemydress.org lists 16 organizations that accept and distribute special occasion dress donations. But by placing itself in a different role and partnering with all the dress donation causes, Donatemydress.org can insert itself and become the de facto national cause.

In fact, Hearst goes one step further and offers instruction not only on how to donate a dress, but a guidebook on how to start a dress drive in your town.

What does Hearst get out of all this?

Well donatemydress.org is part of Hearst Teen Network, which combined gets three million unique visitors a month, according to the website. Alexa rates donatemydress.org as #307,789 in the United States, a little bit ahead of the Alexa ratings for the cause marketing blog.

So while donatemydress.org has advertising on it... meaning Hearst’s sale staff has a little extra inventory to sell, or to give away to valued advertisers... by itself it’s probably not a super valuable site for ad sales.

But I suspect the real value to Hearst is as a branding effort. Better than anyone, Seventeen, knows how hard it is to keep your brand in front of teenage girls, thousands of whom leave their audience every single year. A romantic cause like donating your prom dress to girls who couldn’t otherwise be able to afford them helps keep Seventeen relevant to the rising generation of kids who want to better their world.

Even if all that means is leaving the world a little better dressed at the prom.

The Importance of the Picture in Cause Marketing

Early in my career a grizzled old veteran of marketing and communications for nonprofits said in a meeting “its all comes down to the T-shirts.”

He meant that when it came to marketing and communications campaigns the biggest battles were often over the smallest things, like the T-shirt. Because when it comes to marketing and communications while almost nobody knows anything of the marcom concepts of ‘return of customer investment’ or, ‘share of requirement’ everybody from the CEO to the janitor understands T-shirts.

I’m now a grizzled old veteran and I beg to differ. Everybody seems to want input on T-shirts, that’s true enough. But it’s not all about the T-shirt.

No, in cause marketing one of the details you should obsess over is the picture… or pictures… that illustrates the cause. Among other talents, these days an effective cause marketer better be a good photo editor.

The classic example is Special Olympics. As soon as you see the kids racing in a pool, getting a medal, or reaching out to hug a volunteer, you know everything you need to know. The picture tells more than all the words that follow ever could.

Likewise, a group of woman wearing pink logo T-shirts with their arms draped around a friend whose head has a bandanna tied around a bald head sums up Susan G. Komen’s story with just one photo. A kid being lifted into the cockpit of a jetfighter from a wheelchair tells almost the whole story for Make-A-Wish.

To a degree you can do the same with hospitalized kids, but it’s trickier. At Children’s Miracle Network… which raises money for 170 children’s hospitals in North America… we would never showcase a kid who subsequently died. It cut against the cultural grain. Nor did we often use pictures of a child in a hospital bed with 20 tubes and hoses going into the child, although that image certainly conveys plenty of information.

Other charities don’t have it so easy, Project Sunshine in Southern Nevada, for instance. Project Sunshine has a program called Project Elevate (don’t ask me what the fetish is with the word ‘project’).

Project Elevate aims to help the kids that ‘age out’ of child welfare system by teaching them life skills and providing things like work clothing. Otherwise, the ad copy in a weekly magazine called VegasSeven tells us, they run the risk of ending up destitute in less than 2 years.

Who could argue with a mission like that?

I described Project Elevate in less than 50 words. But just how does Project Elevate illustrate its mission with pictures?

The approach they take in the ad is to use multiple photos, which strikes me as a half-measure. They need to show the diversity of kids affected. But because none of those snapshots has any context they’re just faces, not individuals. And Project Elevate's goal has to be to make us care about the individuals, not the problem.

Imagine instead if the Project Elevate got VegasSeven to run a series of ads, maybe over six or 12 months. And instead of showing snapshots of activities they instead told the story of one kid who had aged out, received help from Project Elevate, and was now working/going to school. That is, demonstrating that they weren’t destitute.

Instead of snapshots, the pictures would show them in class, holding a test tube to the light, crossing the quad, eating pizza with friends, waiting tables, answering phone calls, selling something in a retail store, etc. If the picture was done well, the body copy could be pretty sparse.

They’d want to tell more than one story. And whether they got space from VegasSeven or just posted them on the website, or Facebook, the picture would be a vital piece of the story.

Cause Marketing That Doesn’t Quite Come Together

'Girlfriends for Folate' from the March of Dimes aims to encourage women of reproductive age to take a daily supplement of 400mcg of folic acid so as to prevent certain kinds of birth defects in any children they might bear, and to make donations to the cause and/or participate in its annual walk.

The campaign is sponsored by Bayer and features a celebrity component, a sweepstakes element, and is tied directly to the March of Dimes' March for Babies, which takes place the weekend of April 30, 2011.

So far so good. The problem is that everything doesn’t quite come together.

The ad, from May 2011 issue of Lucky magazine, mentions a celebrity, but not the name, which is a waste. Girlfriendsforfolate.com, a Facebook page, lists the celebrity as Vanessa Minnillo, the TV personality who is currently engaged to singer Nick Lachey.

Meanwhile, the ad in Lucky asks you to donate to the cause. But while you could sign up for the walk on the Facebook page, so far as I could tell there wasn’t a donation option.

Likewise, the magazine ad asks you to involve your girlfriends… Lucky’s audience is women probably 18-32… but aside from the usual Facebook ‘Share’ button, there was no special way to do that.

The information on folic acid on the Facebook page is all there, if a little dry. But it’s not really optimized to allow you to share it. A 5-question quiz on the value of folic acid is the full extent of interactivity.

It’s like the March of Dimes and Bayer have the recipe and all the components for a delicious cake but they stopped after they putting all the ingredients on the counter.

Should Cause Marketing Campaigns Run Year-Round?

If you’re the kind of person who wishes that every day could be like the first day of spring or that Christmas music would play all year long then has Lee, the apparel maker, got a cause marketing campaign for you.

The ad at the left was in the April 2011 issue of women’s magazine Redbook. The next Lee National Denim Day is Friday, October 7, 2011, a full six months from tomorrow. Lee runs these ads…heck, it runs this very ad… about six months out of the year in women's and other magazines.

Lee National Denim Day is a fine and well-promoted cause marketing campaign that dates to 1996. In the years since the campaign has generated more than $83 million for breast cancer research. You could hardly do better than to learn the lessons this smart campaign can teach.

But to repeat the question in the headline, is it smart to plug a one-day effort year round?

There’s actually not many campaigns that run 12 months a year, with Campbell’s Labels for Education, General Mills’ Boxtops for Education, and Product (RED) (more or less) being notable exceptions.

Jerry Welsh, who pioneered cause marketing at American Express almost 30 years ago told me in an interview, “I am wary of permanent promotions. Permanent promotion is a classic case of oxymoron, a contradiction in terms. A permanent promotion is almost always a simple addition to the routine cost of marketing.”

Year-round cause promotions are hard to sustain. People lose interest. You risk cause fatigue in your target markets. You could actually lose impetus by keeping your campaign always on.

But let's make the case for letting campaigns stay on. There are light bulbs that have never been turned off that have shone for decades without burning out. One in Bay Area has been shining for 110 years. Part of what kills light bulbs is all the turning on and off. Maybe keeping a cause campaign going year-round keeps it in fine fettle.

For its part, Lee would likely say that one of the reasons they do it this way is because the way the National Denim Day works is for you to put together a team at work. A team coordinator asks colleagues at work to participate by paying $5 to wear denim on National Denim Day. Then she or he collects and submits the funds.

That said, the teams aren’t at all equivalent to something like the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society’s Team in Training where you get a whole team of people to train for five months and then participate in some marathon athletic event.

Moreover, once National Denim Day is over and the funds have been collected and submitted there’s not much else for anyone to do until the following year.

There’s no arguing with National Denim Day’s success. But could anyone else pull of a year-round cause promotion? Should they even try? Weigh in below with your opinion.

The Ten Worst Cause Marketing Campaigns of 2010

My post from yesterday, April 4, 2011 chronicled my top 10 list of the best cause marketing of 2010.

Today’s post is my list of the 10 worst cause marketing campaigns of 2010 that I posted on during the year.

Cause marketing campaigns land on the worst list because they lack transparency, they use bad judgment, are dishonest, overly-complicated, obtuse, or there’s just something weaselly about them. Just as my favorite campaign in yesterday's post was at the bottom, my my least favorite effort is at the bottom of this page.

1) I certainly thought there was something weaselly about a 2009 campaign from Clorox, which originally dropped in Parenting magazine in December 2009. The ad was ostensibly about saving trees. The art in the ad depicted a Christmas tree. But Clorox wasn’t saving Christmas trees. It mentioned tree-planting and a charity called the California Oak Foundation. But California Oak Foundation wasn’t a tree-planting group. Instead, I wrote, “This ad is all legerdemain” that is, sleight-of-hand.

2) The brand Scotties Tissues also put out ads with an environmental flavor, too. They told us that Irving Tissue, which owns Scotties, plants three trees for every one its cuts down to make Scotties. That’s a little like Nucor Steel claiming special notice for recycling steel. As for Irving planting three trees for every one it cuts down, that’s just prudent forestry management. They have to make up for the trees that will be killed by bugs, animals, and weather. I wrote, “so while this effort from Scotties seems like cause marketing or corporate social responsibility, all it really is just business…I'm calling Scotties out because this has the gloss of corporate social responsibility and cause marketing…when it's really nothing of the kind.”

3) Many cause marketers hated the KFC-Komen hook up a year ago. I did too, but for different reasons than most. I wasn’t terribly bothered by the ‘cause-nitive dissonance’ of fried food… obesity is a cancer risk… supporting Komen. After the firestorm against the campaign started among the chatttering classes Komen and KFC mounted a brave response. But here's what they couldn't say, but that I can; how is Komen supposed to reach the obese if it can’t go where they are? What I hated about the campaign was the way KFC and Komen tried to introduce a sense of competition into it. Why was anyone expected to care that KFC wanted to generate the ‘largest single donation to end breast cancer forever?’

4) I saw a lot of what I eventually termed ‘faux cause marketing’ in 2010, including an effort from Bayer, which looked like cause marketing but wasn’t. The emphasis here is on the past tense of look. The visual the art director choose looked like something for a clean water campaign in the developing world. Instead it had more in common with the kinds of ads you see in the programs for fancy charity galas. It was simply an ad congratulating Pittsburgh, Bayer’s North American headquarters, for cleaning up the Three Rivers.

5) Two other faux cause marketing ads caught my eye, too. One was from Eukanuba, which makes pet foods, the other from Novartis’s over the counter brands like Prevacid and Keri lotion. The Eukanuba ad, which I saw in a lot of publications, had a handsome K-9 officer in uniform and his canine charge. It looked very much like cause marketing, but wasn’t. Novartis’s effort was in a Free-Standing Insert (FSI) and was branded ‘Novartis Cares.’ I wrote, “now, I have no problem with commerce. Someone has to get this economy going again and I’m fine if it’s people with dry skin or gas (who stimulate the economy). For that matter, 400 posts in this blog ought to affirm that I’m OK with most cause marketing, too. But when something walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, I’m disappointed when I find a dog in its place!”

6) One of the busiest cause marketing ads came from the local Window World franchisees. It featured a picture of the owners, Doug and Kathy Llewellyn, and endorsement from and picture of radio star Dave Ramsey, the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval, an Energy Star logo, four URLs, two phone numbers, and not one or even two charity logos, but three! This is ‘everything but the kitchen sink’ cause marketing at its worst.

7) I almost snorted when I saw a Free-Standing Insert (FSI) during National Breast Cancer Awareness from Purina, another pet food company, on behalf of Komen. Not even six months before Purina had run a themed FSI for National Pet Month. I concluded that, “it looks like Purina is hooking its cause marketing dollars to promotional months. So if you represent National Periodontal Disease Month or Fighting Innumeracy in the Workplace Month, by all means contact Purina. It seems like they’re open to a lot of outside-of-the-bag... er... can. I mean, Purina appears to be open to outside-the-box sponsorships.”

8) I wanted to like Southwest Airline’s effort for the Make-A-Wish Foundation, but the campaign, which made use of Facebook Places was so complicated that it was probably self-defeating. It was easy enough to explain. Passengers were asked to check in using their web-enabled device via Facebook Places during the month-long promotion. When they did, Southwest would donate $1 to Make-A-Wish up to $300,000. The challenge was that the explanation of how to use Facebook Places took three screens. That’s Facebook’s fault, not Southwest’s. Still, Southwest choose to use Facebook’s kluge-like system.

9) Dannon’s lid campaign for the National Breast Cancer Foundation looked so much like Yoplait’s effort of longstanding for Komen that I compared it to stealing source code. I wrote, “it seems like a defensive measure on Dannon’s part. In one fell swoop, Dannon made Yoplait’s cause marketing effort slightly generic. Of course, that’s a two-edged sword because it made Dannon’s yogurt cause marketing slightly generic, too… I think the cause marketing world would be richer if Dannon had chosen to be inspired by Yoplait’s label campaign, rather than to try and copy and paste it.”

10) I found a breathless advertorial spread in Elle magazine (see above) for the Hollywood-financed charity called the Creative Coalition worthy of ridicule. The Creative Coalition maintained a party suite for stars during the 2010 Academy Awards where they could come get a drink or a massage and then talk to the media about public affairs topics of the day. I wrote, “‘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.”

The Sweet Spot of Cause Marketing

The graphic at left is a Venn diagram that describes cause marketing relationships between the usual three stakeholders; cause, company/brand and the consumer.

Keep in mind that most cause marketing faces the consumer.

While cause marketing can work when only two of the three circles intersect, there's a sweet spot when all three intersect. In such instances the cause marketing becomes 'painless.'

We use the diagram to find the sweet spot of cause marketing for our clients at Alden Keene.

There are several ways to place brands (cause or corporate) in the Venn diagram. You can just survey internal audiences at either the cause or the company/brand. That's the least expensive and also the least effective.

You can also use certain focus groups/ qualitative efforts like sorts and the like and get close. But the best results come using a proprietary 48-question qualitative survey. Naturally, that's also the most expensive option.

Finally, a note of explanation about the 'Stingy' label seen outside the circles. The Stingy person is immune to brands, either corporate or cause. He, or she, just won't part with their money.

The Stingy persona is different than the 'Smart Shopper.' I'm a Smart Shopper when it comes to buying bottled water. Whatever's cheapest is what I buy. But I'm very brand conscious when it comes to chocolate.

The Best Cause Marketing of 2010

The year 2010 was a memorable year for cause marketing. What follows are, in my judgment, the 10 best cause marketing campaigns of the year.

Please know that this list is hardly exhaustive. Thousands of cause marketing efforts take place each year. In 2010 I posted nearly 190 times and reviewed or highlighted more than 200 different cause marketing efforts. I probably Tweeted out that many more cause marketing campaigns on my Twitter account (@paulrjones) that I didn’t post on. Moreover, to add an extra twist, I frequently post on efforts found in the Alden Keene Cause Marketing Database, and are therefore from years other than 2010.

I’ve listed the top ten in no special order, although I will say that I think the Subaru effort profiled at the bottom of this post is the best of the best. The numbers are just for ease of reference.

During 2010 I also profiled an effort from HUGO Element/HUGO Man fragrances. It’s a buy one give one (BOGO) campaign and notable for the way it connects donors with the cause. It would be on this list too, except that I had a hand in the campaign, and it would be immodest to include it.

This list is necessarily my own and peculiar to me and my thinking. My only criteria was that the effort somehow impressed me.

All that said, here is my list of the top ten cause marketing efforts of 2010:

1). Zynga, creator of the virtual worlds and games including Farmville, Fishville, Zynga Poker, and Mafia Wars, is back in the news for its efforts on behalf of earthquake relief in Japan. But in the aftermath of the January 2010 earthquake in Haiti when you bought virtual items from Zynga for use in those games, a donation was made to the U.N’s World Food Programme. The donations for Haiti from the Zygna community exceeded $1.5 million.

2). When you bought a Samsung Reclaim phone from Sprint with a plan, the mobile carrier would make a $2 donation to the Nature Conservancy. To green up the campaign, the phone itself was made from 80 percent recyclable materials, the packaging was fully recyclable and the phone’s casing was partially made from bio-plastics. Sprint reported that the maximum donation of $500,000 was reached. Given the amount of cellular phones that end up in the waste-stream each year I found this campaign to be more of a start than a finish. But I thought it was a terrific start.

3). One of the Grand Prix awards winners at Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival in 2010 was for a Nike effort on behalf of Lance Armstrong’s LIVESTRONG Foundation. One award winner was ‘Chalkbot’ a machine that laid down inspirational messages on road surfaces of the actual Tour de France course in 2009 in Livestrong’s signature yellow. The messages came from people in the United States and France who had texted them to the Livestrong website. During the month-long Tour de France, the chalkbot laid down more than 36,000 messages. The images were GPS-tagged and photographed to enable social media sharing through Facebook, Twitter and others.

4). In the summer of 2010 the Mars’ brand Snickers candy bars donated the cost of 2.5 million meals to Feeding America, the nation’s leading hunger-relief charity. On the inside of the wrapper was a code. Text the code … or enter it at snickers.com… and Snickers will donate the cost of one meal to Feeding America, up to one million additional meals. I had praise for the way they structured the donation. “By guaranteeing 2.5 million meals, the risk of a poor response to the offer is mitigated for Feeding America. Likewise the risk that the promotion could take off leaving Snickers on the hook for a much bigger donation is also allayed,” I wrote.

5). I also liked the way Brotherton Cadillac in Metro Seattle, structured their campaign. Brotherton highlighted five local charities and invited you to make a donation to them through the Brotherton website. There was also a social media element allowing you to Tweet your support for one of the five charities. When donations to one of the charities reached $140,000, the campaign ended and a sweepstakes kicked in. All Tweets became an official entry for a 2010 Cadillac CTS.

6). There was also a sweepstakes component in Chipotle’s Halloween promotion on behalf Jaime Oliver’s Food Revolution. The campaign invited people to come into a Chipotle dressed as an item of junk food, hand them $2 and you’d get one of their entrée items. The $2, up to $1 million, went to Jaime Oliver’s cause. Take a picture of the costume with Chipotle also depicted in the photo, and you could win a grand prize of $2,500. There were also smaller prizes for runners up.

7). We’ve all heard by now that if Facebook were a country it would the third largest in population behind only China and India. Facebook is well-suited for cause marketing and I found that Marriott’s TownePlace Suites effort on behalf of the American Red Cross made good use of the social media platform. When you made a ‘virtual bed’ at TownePlace’s Facebook page, Marriott made a $2 donation to the Red Cross. The Red Cross used the money for comfort kits.

8). Coke’s Smile-izer effort also made inventive use of social media. When you navigated over to mycoke.com and recorded a laugh for 20 seconds, the company would make a $1 donation to the National Park Foundation, up to $50,000. Your laugh, meanwhile, could be transmitted via all the usual social media outlets and it ‘floated’ around on the mycoke.com website like a Coke bubble. Wild! I didn’t get the connection to the venerable National Park Foundation, but the campaign itself was super-cool.

9). Buy One Give One (BOGO) campaigns continued to catch my eye in 2010 and WeWood’s campaign was my favorite. WeWood sells watches whose cases are made from wood. When you purchased a WeWood watch, the charity American Forests would plant a tree. Tree planting is super cheap, so I might have gigged WeWood for its parsimony; WeWood watches started at $119, after all. Instead, because the watches are made with wood reclaimed from the floor manufacturing process I had nothing but praise for this BOGO.

10). My favorite campaign in 2010 was Subaru’s Share the Love illustrated above. The end-of-year campaign, which Subaru started in 2008, is simplicity itself. Buy or lease a new Subaru before the deadline and Subaru would donate $250 up to $5 million total to the ASPCA, Big Brothers and Big Sisters of America, Habitat for Humanity, Meals on Wheels, and the Ocean Conservancy. The owner/leaser determines which charity gets the money. Subaru even allows new owners to split the money between the charities in percentages. Subaru also gets kudos on its website for pointing people to ways they can help the five charities in addition to buying or leasing a new Subaru. Tim Mahoney, chief marketing officer of Subaru, told the 2009 Chicago Auto Show that the campaign actually saved Subaru money while generating higher sales. “We funded this out of our incentive budget,” Mahoney said. “Our incentive costs actually went down in December (2008), year over year. So it was a way of taking the resources we have and spreading them to organizations that could use it. And at the end of the day we raised a lot of money. A lot of money. Which makes me very happy and proud to be associated with it.”

Tomorrow: The worst cause marketing of 2010.