High Caliber Cause Marketing

In cities prone to gun violence, gun buyback programs can effectively take guns off the street. The challenge is in funding the cost of the buybacks. Now cause marketing is lending a helping hand to the gun buyback program in Newark, New Jersey, a city of 275,000 about 10 miles west of Manhattan.

Here’s how it works:

Jewelry for a Cause, headquartered in Greenwich, Connecticut buys shredded handguns from the city of Newark. It then melts the steel, aluminum and other metal alloys that makeup handguns and transforms them into a jewelry collection called Caliber. Pieces from the collection… expected to include rings, necklaces and bracelets… go on sale this summer at JewelryforaCause.net and are priced from $150 to $5,000.

Jewelry for a Cause is the brainstorm of corporate-lawyer-turned-jeweler Jessica Mindich, who has donated 20 percent of proceeds from several of her lines to causes including the Alzheimer’s Association, American Red Cross, and DoSomething.org.

Newark has long had a reputation as one of America’s most violent cities. Although violent crimes have been trending downward in the city for more than 10 years, it’s still about than 15 percent more violent than the United States as a whole and almost 200 percent more violent than the rest of New Jersey as a whole.

In November 2009 Newark offered a no-questions-asked gun buyback that yielded 280 guns at an average price of around $200. The $50,000 budgeted then was gone in three days, according to press reports.

During the 2010 buyback … the last time it took place… people received $350 per gun. Jewelry for a Cause took the metal from 250 guns for Caliber. That suggests it paid around $87,500 for the raw material. Assuming each gun averages around 28 ounces, Jewelry for a Cause bought about 7,000 ounces of metal for about $12.50 an ounce. No steel or aluminum on the planet costs that much per ounce.

For the sake of comparison, yesterday’s spot gold price was $1665 an ounce. Silver was $31 an ounce.

But, of course, Jewelry for a Cause wasn’t looking for just any steel or aluminum for its Caliber line. The back story of the Newark metal will help Mindich sell Caliber.

In short, cause marketing comes to the rescue again!

Cause Marketing or Corporate Philanthropy Program? It’s Not a Yes or No Question.

If your company is an active corporate cause marketer, should it also be an active corporate donor?

The short answer is yes.

The question was prompted by a press release I saw recently announcing a new cause marketing effort from Godiva, the high-end chocolatier owned by the Turkish company Yildiz Holding, and headlined ‘Godiva Launches Philanthropy Program.’ 

Now Godiva almost certainly didn’t write the headline for the release I saw, but a quick reading made it clear that what Godiva was announcing was more a cause marketing than a corporate philanthropy effort.

Godiva’s program recognizes women around the world who “contribute to their communities and inspire others to do the same.” The first honoree is Lauren Bush Lauren and the recipient of funds raised will be the charity she co-founded, FEED Projects, a global anti-hunger charity.

A new honoree will be chosen in 2013.

In time for Mother’s Day in the United States, Sunday May, 13, 2012, you can buy FEED tote bags… made by women in Liberia… online and at Godiva stores for $25. The tote bags will yield 10 meals for schoolchildren in the cacao-producing countries of Africa. Several of Godiva’s boxes are also packaged with the totes to also yield a donation to FEED.

It’s a nice campaign that’s been well thought-through. So, is Godiva done here?

The short answer is not if that’s all they do.  

Companies that do cause marketing should also be active donors to nonprofits, whether through a corporate foundation or by just writing checks.

Here’s why. Cause marketing is like one of those 7-layer chocolate cakes. It’s big and impressive and almost everyone wants a taste. But even though it is made with wholesome ingredients like eggs, milk, flour and maybe dark chocolate, and even though you could certainly eat a slice of it as a meal, it’s not really a meal replacement for very many charities.

For that matter, corporate philanthropy in general isn’t a ‘meal replacement’ for charities either. In the United States less than 10 percent of all charitable giving comes from corporations.

That said, cause marketing still isn’t a substitute for corporate philanthropy, it’s an addition. Cause marketing can raise tons of money (and awareness). More, even, than a corporate foundation might give in a year. But a well-funded corporate foundation might mail checks to hundreds of charities a year.

Prudent and generous companies ought to offer both corporate philanthropy and cause marketing.

An Actionable Marketing Plan for Nonprofits in 8 Sentences

If your cause is small, marketing it can be tricky. But marketing legend Jay Conrad Levinson has some ideas for how you can create an easy-to-use marketing plan for even the thinnest budgets

Jay Conrad Levinson… who gave wings to the term ‘guerrilla marketing’… has written or co-written so many books on the topic of marketing that I couldn’t get an accurate count of his full bibliography. But it’s something north of 50 books. His deep experience is your gain; the two or three of his books that I’ve read are chockablock full of usable information and ideas for marketers.

For charity clients with tiny budgets I use a modified version of one of Levinson’s tried and true techniques; the ‘seven sentence marketing plan.’ You heard that right, a marketing plan in just 7 sentences!

Here they are, plus an eighth that is my own addition.

1. The first sentence tells your purpose in marketing. The purpose has to be expressed in ways that are SMART: Sensible, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time bound.
2. The second sentence lays out the competitive advantage you’ll emphasize. Even if you have multiple competitive advantages you can really only emphasize one.
3. The third sentence explains who your target audience is. Even if you sell soap, your target market is not the whole world.
4. The fourth sentence explains what marketing weapons you’ll use. Limit the list based on stuff you can afford, you can understand and you can use properly.
5. The fifth sentence tells your niche in the market place. This is positioning against competitors. For instance, I’m a marketer, but my niche is subset of marketing called cause marketing.
6. The sixth sentence tells your identity. Don’t misrepresent your identity. Customers will see through it and cease working with you.
7. The seventh sentence expresses your marketing budget as a percentage of projected gross sales.
8. My eighth sentence explains how you will position your business to maximize word of mouth and social media. Word of mouth has always been the most credible form of marketing. And free social media…, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, et al… is a perfect way to enable word of mouth.

There your are. An actionable marketing plan for even the smallest cause or nonprofit in just 8 sentences.

CauseMarketing.biz Word Cloud

Quick post today from the left coast.

I’ve been having some fun with word clouds and the one at the left is from this very blog.

Like many such things, this word cloud hides as much as elucidates.

It’s plain, for instance, that the word cloud generator only grabs posts from the top-most page of the blog.

Still, it has its own beauty.

Cause Marketing Your Klout

An article in the May 2012 issue of Wired magazine makes it clear that I have another thing to feel inadequate about; my Klout score, which is a very modest 31. (Maybe it's time to take that Facebook thing seriously. Hmm.) For camparison's sake, Justin Bieber’s Klout score is a perfect 100. Robert Scoble’s is 85.

But now I can use my inadequacy for good. Klout for Good is a promotion that asks you to support Charity: Water, the World Wildlife Fund, and the American Heart Association’s Go Red for Women. Klout also promoted a Christmastime tweet drive that generated gifts for underprivileged kids.

The Go Red and World Wildlife Fun efforts are primarily awareness-raisers, although they’ll certainly take your money. But the Charity: Water promotion is a fundraiser and a clever one at that.

Charity: Water asks you to ‘donate your birthday;’ that is to ask your social networks to donate to the cause in your name on your birthday.

As of this writing, 12,889 people had pledged their birthdays. Charity: Water promises to use all the money raised for water projects. When it’s all said and done, they’ll send you a photo and GPS coordinates of the water project your birthday funded (or, helped fund).

It wasn’t clear to me how the donations were processed or if Klout offers any more than just promotional support, but I dig it. The marketing was based around the idea that you and I probably already have plenty of stuff and don’t need more, positioning that I think can be very effective.

Your cause could almost certainly offer something very similar, even if the picture and GPS coordinates don’t make sense for what you do.

Your Non-Donating Neighbors Think You Need to Give More to Good Causes

A new study finds that people who don’t donate money to causes realize the heightened need and have found a solution: you need to give more, especially if you’re 'rich.'

The study, from Grey Matter Research, is a companion piece to a study released by Grey in Feb 2012 that found that charity donors say they’d keep giving even if Congress took away tax deductibility, they just weren’t sure you would.

In this study, instead of asking why they weren’t active charitable donors, Grey Matter asked people who hadn’t made any donations to nonprofits in prior 12 months about their perceptions of nonprofits and giving.

What they found is that 83 percent of American who don’t give would give if they had it. 

But the shocker was this: people who earned $100,000 or more were just as likely as those earning $20,000 or less to wish they had enough to donate.

More from Grey Matter’s study here.

Some of this miserliness could be the fault of fundraisers who emphasize larger donation amounts when prospecting. After all, it’s just as much work to ask for $100 as it is to ask for $10,000.

But part this rebounds onto the culture itself that has forgotten (or never learned) the parable of the widow’s mite. Part of the price of American civilization is to donate to worthy causes, even when you can’t afford much. If 10 million American families who hadn’t previously donated gave just $50 a year that would mean an extra half-billion dollars in charitable donations to worthy causes.

That 'widow's mite' would become the widow's might.

Earth Day Needs to Slim Down its List of Must-Dos to be Really Successful

Yesterday, Sunday April 22 was the 42st Earth Day in the United States, but if you saw less promotional activity wrapped aroun the day it may be because Earth Day has 'jumped the shark."

Albe Zakes, global VP of media retalions for TerraCycle, told Amy Westervelt at BusinessGreen.com that "With everyone and their mother doing some kind of quasi-green messaging around Earth Day, you risk a truly environmentally responsible promotion, product or service getting lumped into consumer's green fatigue and being consider green washing,"

Far be it for me to say I told you so, but I told you so last year on Earth Day 2011.

"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."

I found a Kellogg’s Earthday Sweepstakes website, highlighted in an FSI (free-standing insert) that had a rotating banner which listed no less than 20 things we could do as individuals to improve the environment.

"My Earth Day friends," I wrote, "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 locally sourced food is no slam dunk. If, for instance, the tomatoes you're eating are locally-sourced, but grown in a hothouse, it probably takes less carbon to grow and ship them from some warm weather climate than it takes to heat a local hothouse!

"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 (now 42) years ago. And it can get better still."

But it's gotta be messaged smarter.

And smarter messaging means fewer concurrent goals.

Variable Donation Amounts in Cause Marketing, A Hypothetical

Today’s post is a brief thought experiment or hypothetical. What would happen if the donation amount in cause marketing was variable? How would that affect participation and results for the company and the cause?

For instance, suppose that you buy a Sole insole or ‘footbed.’ Sole was the topic of Wednesday’s post. One of the causes Sole sponsors is the shoe charity Soles4Souls. Soles4Souls is always looking for gently-used shoes. So let’s suppose that when you buy a Sole footbed that Sole donates $1. But if you buy a Sole footbed plus donate a pair of shoes then Sole donates, perhaps, $3. Would that increase in-kind donations for Soles4Souls? Would it increase sales for Sole?

You can probably imagine other variable donation scenarios as well involving Tweets or Facebook ‘likes’ or repins on Pinterest.

What I’m talking about is frequently used by experimental economists in laboratory settings. In experimental economics you’re given a number of choices to make using real money and given certain rules and circumstances. The tests are designed according to standard game theory.

The ‘dictator game’ is frequently used to test altruism in people, for instance. I cited an example last year whereby someone started with $10 and for every dollar they gave up and anonymous partner would get $5. In such cases altruism could be said to be ‘cheap.’ If, however, your anonymous partner got just $0.20 for every dollar you gave up, altruism would be very expensive.

What would you want to offer variable donation amounts? To encourage certain behavior, of course: to make altruism cheap.

And cheap altruism is a worthy goal, certainly in public policy settings. It's why some countries allow donations to nonprofits to be tax deductible.

What do you think? Respond below in the comments section.

End Malaria Day Book Does its Cause Marketing Job

April 25. 2012 is End Malaria Day and to help purchase insecticide-treated nets more than 60 (mainly) A-list business and personal development writers are publishing a book by the same name, ‘End Malaria Day.’ Buy it on Kindle for $20 and all $20 goes to purchase anti-malarial nets that will drape over someone’s bed, probably in Africa where malaria is endemic. The paperback version is $25 and in that case net profits go to buy nets like the one at the left. It’s a terrific cause and a cool roster of business thinkers. I hope you’ll join me in buying the book/download.

But as I was mousing around the EndMalariaDay.com site I came across a comment from “Tkharris” who asks, “Can we just contribute without buying the book?” I don’t know whether or not the site allows direct donations, but it certainly ought to.

But TK’s comment set me to thinking. What he or she seems to be doing is repudiating one of the small handful of a cause marketing campaigns I’ve even seen wherein every single penny generated goes to the cause. One hundred percent cause marketing would normally be seen as the highest ideal. And yet it’s seemingly not enough for Tkharris.

But let’s treat TK fairly. After all, it could be that what he or she intends to do is donate $1,000… enough to buy 100 nets or so… and perhaps TK can’t manage to give away that many books/downloads. I hope that’s the case.

It may also be that TK just doesn’t like cause marketing, even when 100 percent of the purchase price goes to the cause.

If money doesn’t hold any sway for TK when it comes to cause marketing, maybe this will. It’s pretty likely that TK wouldn’t know about malaria and the dire necessity for malaria nets if not for the promotion and the website. If TK did already know about it, then his or her question is either unnecessary or meant to be provocative.

There’s plenty of fine organizations that will take your money to provide anti-malarial nets. A quick Google search will show who they are.

What I’m talking about is the awareness-raising aspect of cause marketing that I myself generally pooh-pooh. I understand the value of awareness-raising. But high awareness won’t buy you a cup of coffee at any Starbucks unless you also hand the friendly barrista $5.

But let’s get back to TK. Malaria infects 400,000 people a year in Africa and about 1 million people die from it every year, a disproportionate number of whom are children. It’s a scourge of the worst kind in Africa, where 90 percent of the deaths to malaria occur. Malaria has been well-covered by the mainstream media. I’ve covered it in multiple postings in my little corner of the social media. And yet TK seems only to just be learning this from a cause marketing campaign!

How?

Well, TK probably wasn’t searching on End Malaria Day or even on malaria for the reasons I've addressed. TK likely landed at EndMalariaDay.com site because she searched on Seth Godin or Tom Peters or Jonah Lehrer or got linked to the site from one of their channels. All those folks contributed an essay to the book. Other contributors include: Dave Ramsey, Gary Vaynerchuk, Dan Pink, Sir Ken Robinson and many more. (It’s a veritable who’s who of Fast Company contributors and TED presenters.)

The End Malaria Day campaign did its job, in other words. It raised awareness high enough that TK can question the need for the campaign.

Cause Marketing Your Customer Satisfaction Warranty

Orthotic insole maker Sole offers a cause marketing approach that addresses a different side of business than I’ve ever seen before. Although details are sketchy, when you return one of their insoles within 90 days of purchase (their standard return timeframe) a donation of some amount comes to the shoe charity Soles4Souls.

In addition to insoles (the company prefers the word ‘footbeds’) Sole sells shoes, flip flops, and socks. Sole, which is based in Vancouver, British Columbia, supports other causes via more standard transactional cause marketing, including efforts for ReCork, Karno Kids, Big City Mountaineers, and SoleUK. Transactional cause marketing is when a donation to a cause is triggered by a purchase.

But triggering a donation based on a product return is a really novel concept. Sole also encourages its patrons to send in their gently-used shoes directly to Soles4Souls.

But with this product warranty approach to cause marketing Sole is making three bets; the first is you’ll be so satisfied with their product that you won’t return it. The second bet is that you won’t be more likely to return because of the cause marketing component. The third bet is that you'll be more likely to plunk $50 down for a pair of Sole footbeds if there's a cause component to the return.

A news report in Outdoor USA Magazine put Sole’s U.S. return rate at 0.6 percent.

Who else could do this?

It would have to be for a product that is relatively small and easy to ship. Your USB drive could potentially offer cause-based warranty assurance. If you weren’t satisfied with it you’d return the USB drive for a refund, and the company would make a donation to, say, Dress for Success or Junior Achievement.

But it’s hard to imagine Ford doing that for its F-150 trucks or, for that matter, Herman Miller doing the same for one of its Aeron chairs.

This is an intriguing approach to cause marketing that I’m going to watch very closely.

Cause Marketing to Moms? Engage Them Via Social Media.

If moms are the market for your cause marketing a new study shows that social media may be the way to their hearts.

The study, called ‘Social Media Moms’ finds them more engaged in social media than other woman, more likely to own a smart phone and a tablet, more frequent visitors to Facebook and Google+, and more likely to read a company post in their newsfeed.

The sample size for the phone-based study was nearly 3,000 women. It was sponsored by Performics and conducted in December 2011 by ROIResearch.

There were numerous other findings, which I think make this well worth your time to review in its entirety. But I’ll concentrate just on the corporate questions. Namely the questions that address how moms think and wish to engage with companies and brands.

• “Believe that consumers can influence companies by voicing opinions on social networks: 63% (vs. 56% for non-moms)”
  

• “Desire more frequent communications with brands via Facebook 38% (vs. 28%) want to receive communications more than once a week.”
  

• “Say social network based communications from companies/brands are replacing other communication channels 56% (vs. 45%).”

Moms are more likely read a company/brand’s post in their newsfeed (52% vs. 37%).

They’re more likely to read a company/brand’s Facebook page (43% vs. 30%).

And, importantly, they’re more likely to have made a purchase based on the recommendation on a social networking site (42% vs. 29%). And they’re more likely to purchase from a company/brand that they’ve ‘liked’ (44% vs. 32%).

A good deal of cause marketing targets moms. This valuable survey tells us that a very likely place to engage with and even sell to them is via social media.

You Can Learn a Lot About What Reporters Think of Cause Marketing By the Questions They Ask

Yogi Berra, the former Yankee player and manager was famed for his fractured English, or Yogi-isms. For instance, Berra once said, "a nickel ain't worth a dime anymore." And, "it's like deju vu all over again." (The drawing at the left of Berra is by the talented caricaturist Jerry Breen).

He also said, "you can observe a lot just by watching." To that I'd add, you can learn a lot about what reporters think about cause marketing by the questions they ask.

I get calls from reporters wanting quotes about the practice of cause marketing. I know David Hessekiel at the Cause Marketing Forum and Joe Waters, author of Cause Marketing for Dummies take plenty of calls as well. The reporter I spoke few weeks back asked the questions in bold and my responses follow. I won't reveal her name or publication until her piece is published.

Until then, get a sense about what's on reporter's minds about cause marketing by reading the questions she asked me.

What is cause marketing and how does it work?

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

How it specifically works depends on the flavor of cause marketing that we’re talking about. But in general cause marketing plays upon the social psychology concepts of reciprocity and social proof.

How did it start?

Cause marketing is usually dated from 1983 when American Express ran a campaign meant to increase the number of American Express card holders and transactions, while raising money for the restoration of the Statue of Liberty. The campaign accomplished all three.

The term “cause-related marketing” was coined by an American Express executive named Jerry Welsh. Later Welsh trademarked the term, which, so far as I know, American Express still owns, although the company generously allows anyone to use it.

In fact, American Express had been doing regional cause marketing efforts in places like Chicago and Dallas. Another pioneer, Bruce Burtch, did some early cause marketing efforts in and around San Francisco in the late 1970s.

You can actually go back much further still to the original installation of the Statue of Liberty. In January 1885 the Statue of Liberty was laying around New York City warehouses, still in pieces because the money to build the pedestal had run out. To give the fundraising a shot in the arm, Joseph Pulitzer, the newspaper publisher, offered to print the name of everyone who donated even a penny toward the cause. The money poured in and construction on the pedestal resumed in August 1885 and was completed in April 1886.

You can probably go back at least another 100 years. I’ve never looked at it closely, but wouldn’t be surprised to learn that the nation’s first fire department, championed by Ben Franklin, had some proto-cause marketing aspects to it.

How does cause marketing differ from corporate philanthropy?

Let me say first that I don’t think this should be an either/or proposition. Responsible companies ought to do both.

As far as differences go, cause marketing is more promotional than corporate philanthropy. And there’s more of a sense of a partnership and mutual benefit.

Corporate philanthropy tends to be run out a company’s foundation while cause marketing is usually run out of a company’s marketing department. It seems like a small distinction, but it’s not.

By tying cause marketing to the marketing function it ends up being more of a business partnership among equals than a charity with their hat in their hands. Plus there are goals and objectives in a cause marketing promotion that are mostly absent in corporate philanthropy.

There’s a few more differences. The funds generated in cause marketing efforts frequently come from consumers directly, so what a company is giving, fundamentally, is access to its customers. Because of the democratic way the funds are generated they represent unrestricted money for the cause, which is very valuable to causes. Cause marketing is generally done by companies that face consumers.

Also, there are some practical limits to number of causes a single company could do cause marketing with. But a well-funded corporate foundation might mail checks to hundreds of charities a year.

Finally, a well-conceived and well-executed cause marketing campaign can generate millions of dollars in a year. By contrast, the only corporate foundations with the wherewithal to grant $1 million in the same year are almost certainly associated with Fortune 500 level companies.

Why is cause marketing gaining in popularity?

The short answer is the consumer. The modern consumer zeitgeist is that companies ought to be involved in the important causes of the day. Since the balance of power has shifted from companies to consumers over the last decade or so, companies have little choice except to meet their customer’s expectations and engage in cause marketing. And it’s a virtuous cycle. Studies show that even with all the cause marketing we see today, the public expects more.

What are the benefits of cause marketing for the sponsors and the charity?

There are basically five benefits for sponsors: 1). Cause marketing can directly enhance sponsor sales and brand. 2). Cause marketing can heighten customer loyalty. 3). Cause marketing can boost a company's public image and helps distinguish it from the competition. I would add that it can also give corporate PR officers a new story to tell. 4). Cause marketing can help build employee morale and loyalty. 5). Cause marketing can improve employee productivity, skills and teamwork.

For causes the practice offers several benefits as well: 1). Unrestricted dollars. 2). Branding paid for by someone else. 3). Positive association with better known brands.

What are some characteristics of good cause marketing campaigns – and bad ones?

Good cause marketing has several earmarks. The promotion can be easily understood. The relationship between the sponsor and the cause makes some kind of logical sense. The promotion is transparent and open. And they communicate throughout. Not just when they start. The best have a little something extra in the promotion that compels people to participate. I borrowed film director Alfred Hitchcock’s word and call it a McGuffin, or an element that makes people want to act.

I do an annual best and worst cause marketing list on my blog which is very popular. Campaigns end up on the ‘worst’ list because they lack transparency, they use bad judgment, are dishonest, overly-complicated, obtuse, or there’s just something weasely about them.

Press Here For Cause Marketing Drama

I’ve written in the past about using a ‘MacGuffin in your cause marketing campaigns. When I tell live audiences about it often as not I got a shrug from marketers. “What do you mean by a MacGuffin,” they'd ask?

Alfred Hitchcock, the legendary filmmaker, used to speak of a movie's “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.

But even that explanation didn’t seem to satisfy everyone.

So, I’ve found the perfect illustration for the idea of a MacGuffin, on YouTube of course.

At left is a promotional video from one of the cable networks that relies on a MacGuffin to get things started. Hanging above a button in the square of a quiet Flemish burg is a sign that says “Push to Add Drama.” The sign, which all but shouts mystery, is the MacGuffin.

In time someone does push the button and what follows is a pretty fun ad.

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? What will make them push the button?

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, or a sweepstakes or media component. Or some combination of them all.

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 reason for someone to 'push the button.' You may need a MacGuffin.

Some Sweet Payback for Your Good Deeds

The Generous Store was a pop-up store in Denmark, open for just one day, that didn’t take your money for its products. Instead, Anthon Berg the European chocolatier which operated The Generous Store, asked you to pledge to perform some specific good deed for a friend or loved one in return for which you got some of Berg’s chocolates.

The promotion plays on Anthon Berg’s tagline which is “You Can Never Be Too Generous.”

There were no cash registers in the store. Instead, Anthon Berg clerks wandered the store with iPads. You’d log onto your Facebook account, friend Anthon Berg and pledge to your friend/loved one whatever the required good deed was for the specific item. In the following days and weeks Facebook filled with the photos and accounts of good deeds done by those keeping their pledges.

It’s a lovely idea.

Ben and Jerry’s Scoop Shops do a free cone day every year, so they could certainly adopt something like this.

It would be great to see a cause element added whereby you pledge to do a good deed for a specific charity or cause, although I can understand why Anthon Berg didn’t take that approach. After all, who would post the deed to Facebook?

I can also imagine some kind of pay it forward aspect. You hear about people in drive-up windows paying for the order of the person immediately behind them. Surely the people receiving the good deed could somehow be encouraged to keep the chain of good deeds going.

(By the way, causemarketing.biz now has more than 800 posts, generously donated by yours truly. If you ever feel like offering a token of thanks for this boon of cause marketing information and opinion, I'll be happy to accept it in the form of fine European chocolates).

Using Colored Ribbons to Symbolize Your Cause

How powerful is the colored ribbon as a visual awareness symbol? Can causes and nonprofits continue to adopt existing colored ribbons and yet still have meaning invested in all the rest? What’s the potential for confusion when two or more different charities/causes claim the same color of ribbon? When another cause adopts a colored ribbon already in use, does it undermine meaning or expand it? Could another iconic image beside a ribbon come to mean as much? Isn’t there a ‘me-to’ aspect to ribbons nowadays? Could ribbons be overused to the point where there’s a colored ribbon backlash?

These and other questions came back to me when I heard from a reporter in Columbus, Ohio yesterday asking about a blue ribbon campaign the state is doing in support of child abuse prevention. It reminded me of ‘thank you to our sponsors’ ad I found in the Alden Keene Cause Marketing Database from WalkAmerica, the fundraiser for the March of Dimes.

In the bottom right corner of the March of Dimes ad was a blue and pink ribbon (get it?). Frankly it came as a surprise to me that March of Dimes… which works to prevent birth defects… had a ribbon and that they choose to feature it so prominently in the ad.

If the entry under Pink Ribbon in Wikipedia is to be believed then ribbons in America came in vogue in later years of World War I when a marching cadence sung by the doughboys had the line “around her hair she wore a yellow ribbon.” Another Wikipedia entry said that the yellow ribbons were worn by wives and girlfriends of American Cavalrymen in the 19th century. Another says the practice was brought to America from Europe by Puritans during Colonial times. During WWII songs were written about yellow ribbons and soldiers coming home.

But the biggest hit using the yellow ribbon theme came from Tony Orlando and Dawn in the 1970s with their song “Tie a Yellow Ribbon ‘Round the Ole Oak Tree,” which was about a prisoner returning home to his sweetheart. Later, American embassy officials held hostage in Iran found yellow ribbons waiting for them on their return home in 1981. In short for perhaps 300 years, the yellow ribbon has meant a homecoming.

Then in the early 1990s AIDS activists began to employ red ribbons not as a symbol of homecoming but to bring awareness to the fight against that dread disease. Very soon thereafter activists against breast cancer began to employ pink ribbons as a symbol of the fight against that dread disease.

In Canada and increasingly worldwide the white ribbon signifies opposition to violence against women. It is also used by the Quebec peace movement to signal their disapproval of the war in Iraq.

Blue ribbons mean remembrance of police officers killed in action in Victoria, Australia. In Spain the blue ribbon is worn by those who oppose the terrorism of ETA. In Ukraine blue ribbons are worn in protest of the seizure of power during the “Orange Revolution.”

And on it goes. Every color of ribbon you could name means something to a cause or nonprofit somewhere.

Or does it?

Is it really possible for a purple ribbon to be truly meaningful for the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation when it already stands for awareness of pancreatic cancer, as a protest against horse slaughter, as a sign of Pagan solidarity, and in memory of slain Beatle John Lennon?

I can see both sides of the argument. The wearing of ribbons has perhaps 15 generations of meaning woven into it, and maybe more. Why kick against the pricks?

Here’s one reason: if an existing icon has so much meaning attached to it you might find that you can’t really modify it. Yellow ribbons probably fit that category.

Here then is my suggested rule of thumb if your cause or nonprofit is thinking about utilizing a colored ribbon: If you’re one of the first five to adopt the color, well bully for you and your cause. Run hard with it.

But if you’re the last ribbon to the party… say, number six or beyond… then it’s time to head back to the drawing board and develop some other iconic image and color that can denote the unique passion, mission and thrust of your cause.

Because, let’s be honest, most of the colored ribbons are pretty well tied up.

Susan G. Komen for the Cure, Still an Active Cause Marketer

In the immediate aftermath of Susan G. Komen for the Cure’s silly public missteps with Planned Parenthood (and KFC before that), a lot of pundits read the tea leaves and foresaw corporate defections from Komen’s sponsor list and public excoriation.

So much for all that.

On April 5, 2012 Komen and Caribou Coffee announced a deal whereby Komen would be the beneficiary of Amy’s Blend, a coffee blend names for former Caribou roastmaster Amy Erickson, who succumbed to breast cancer after a lengthy battle. Komen is also the partner in Amy’s Gardens, three gardens that celebrate Erickson’s valiant fight.

With 450 stores, Caribou is the second-largest coffee house chain in the United States, after the much, much larger Starbucks.

Caribou inked the deal despite the fact that there are anti-Komen websites, scholars whose careers hinge on being anti-Komen, an anti-Komen documentary movie, and a half-dozen of so direct competitors.

Komen absorbs the blows from all these brickbats and more and keeps on growing. (Although you wouldn’t have guessed from the way Komen was portrayed as the Goliath in the blowup that the breast cancer charity is not even half the size of Planned Parenthood).

Is Komen immune to any and all criticisms? Of course not. It’s just has a bigger store of goodwill than has been required by their several gaffes, perceived and real.

Add to that the fact that what Komen does is needed by the community of breast cancer fighters and survivors and you have a kind of replay in miniature of what happened to the United Way of America 20 years ago.

In February 1992 William Aramony resigned as CEO of United Way of America amid allegations of a lavish lifestyle funded by United Way monies. Aramony was subsequently convicted on 23 counts of fraud and other illegal acts. He spent 6 years in prison.

How is this like Komen in any way, shape or form?

Well, ask yourself these questions: Was United Way shaken by the scandal? You bet. Shaken to its very core. Before his fall, Aramony was a very capable operator. Has United Way suffered long-time ill effects from the Aramony scandal? It looks to me like its growth curve did. Although I’m not enough of a statistician to say if it was the Aramony scandal that did it or the concurrent transformation of the American economy that left the United Way with fewer large company payrolls to fundraise amongst. So was United Way done in by the Aramony Scandal? Not by a long shot.

United Way remains viable because goodwill for local United Ways is still high and because the substitutes for the United Way are only slightly better now than they were 20 years ago.

The opinions of its haters notwithstanding, Komen has only been tagged by these several dustups, not bruised. Komen remains well-positioned for the future.

Certainly that’s what Caribou Coffee is saying.

Results from Cinnabon’s Cause-Powered Location-Based Social-Media Campaign

Last year Cinnabon wanted to straighten out the mess of location venues listed on Foursquare and Facebook Places, and cause marketing helped the company achieve excellent results.

Cinnabon was active on both Foursquare and Facebook Places, but the venue listings were something of a mess. Cinnabon makes cinnamon rolls and other sweet-smelling treats meant to tempt as you walk through the mall, airport concourse, or other high-traffic locales. That's one of their pecan-caramel tempters at the left.

Because of duplicates or bad GPS coordinates many Cinnabon locations showed poorly in Foursquare search results. To correct that, the company determined to undertake ‘venue optimization.’

“Venue optimization creates one location that would be checked into most often, and that increases your visibility on Foursquare,” Cinnabon’s corporate communications manager Rachel Hadley told the Nation’s Restaurant News earlier this month. “If there are 10 other venues for that location with a few check-ins, they’ll all be lower in the search results.”

Cinnabon started the process in April 2011. The optimization was completed in July 2011 and by October Cinnabon was ready to take the shiny-new system out for a test run.

So Cinnabon tried an agressive cause marketing offer every bit as tempting as their treats. For every Foursquare check-in at 250 participating locations during the month, Cinnabon made a fat $1 donation to Operation Gratitude up to $10,000. The cause sends care packages to American military personnel deployed overseas.

The results were gratifying for Operation Gratitude and Cinnabon both. Cinnabon wrote a check for $10,000 to Operation Gratitude. Another $40,000 was raised in the stores. Cinnabon’s location-based social media also enjoyed a huge uptick.

Foursquare check-ins increased 122 percent and tweets went up 113 percent, thanks to the Operation Gratitude promotion. This after Cinnabon had already recorded dramatic improvements in both Facebook Places and Foursquare check-ins due to the venue optimization efforts.

As I’ve pointed out before, but we don’t often get too see the results of cause marketing efforts from a company’s point of view. So thanks to Cinnabon and Nation’s Restaurant News for sharing.

Using Cause Marketing to Reward Volunteers

Quick post today without any editorializing. I hope you’ll express your opinion in the comments below.

Cause.it is a mobile app that let’s businesses reward charitable behavior from charity volunteers with discounts and coupons.

Here’s how it works: volunteers grab the app and sign up in either ‘say cause’ or ‘do cause’ categories. 'Say' volunteers might Tweet or post in support of a cause. 'Do' volunteers offer something more hands-on and real-world.

Volunteers earn points for their activities which can be redeemed at local businesses. Local businesses reward people from their existing stock of discounts and promotions. For a fee they get a report that tells them what offers, causes, and people actually move the sales needle.

“At long last,” the explanatory video above says, “cause-related marketing has metrics.”

Cause.it appears to be limited right now to Indianapolis.

What do you think? Thumbs up or thumbs down?

Cause Marketing Puts Eyeglass-Maker Warby Parker in the Big Time

Warby Parker, which uses buy one-give one (BOGO) cause marketing as a key element of its positioning and marketing has officially hit the big time. Investors and the business press are taking note of the company’s 500 percent growth in 2011.

Since its founding in 2010 Warby Parker has sold stylish spectacles for $95. For every pair you buy the company gives a second pair to someone who needs them.

Since Warby Parker’s BOGO appeal emerged on the heels of TOMS Shoes BOGO, it’s easy to conclude that its BOGO was a case of me-to. But there’s more to the story than that.

Eyeglasses were invented in 1286 by Friar Giordano da Pisa. Ben Franklin added the bifocals in the 1780s. But aside from little things like adding gradient lenses or different coatings, there hasn’t been that much innovation in eyeglasses in the years since. (Although that may be changing with "Google glasses").

Eyeglasses seem exactly like the kind of product that would be commoditized. And, yet, strangely, they haven't been. More surprising still, eyeglasses have crazy profit margins. Their markup isn’t just 100 percent like in clothing, but 10 to 20 times what they cost to manufacture!

There’s plenty of competition, to be sure, but not as much as TOMS faces with shoes. And for all the competition, there’s really only one dominant player, the $7 billion (sales) Italian company Luxottica Group, which owns Ray Ban, Persol, Oakley, LenCrafters and more. Luxottica is also an active cause marketer.

Warby Parkers founders, Neil Blumenthal, David Gilboa, Andrew Hunt and Jeffrey Raider, who were buddies at Wharton Business School, must have looked at the eyeglass market and salivated. But nothing I’ve said here so far wasn’t known by others. What Warber Parker did was to completely regrind the business model.

They made the look of Warby Parker glasses handsome enough that the fashion forward young man or women could confidently wear them. And the youth market was important early on as the brand gained traction. But let’s not kid ourselves, there’s plenty of places where you could find similarly-styled eyeglasses.

They also priced the glasses right. The materials and labor in glasses amount to a few bucks each. But who among us would trust our eyesight to glasses that cost, say, $10? Or even $25? No, $100 is about right.

They focused tightly on their own cost structure and sold online only. Until recently all of Warby Parker’s promotional efforts, as with TOMS Shoes, were via word of mouth.

But the kicker was the BOGO. While Warby Parker is building its brand, the BOGO makes it easier for prospective customers to try something unfamiliar. As the brand matures, the BOGO will help Warby Parker repel competitors.

Concludes Gwen Moran in her January 2012 profile in Entrepreneur magazine:

“Meanwhile, the company’s philanthropic commitments remain strong:

“It recently became a certified B Corporation and purports to be one of the few carbon-neutral eyewear brands in the world. ‘It was important to the four of us,’ Blumenthal says, ‘that if we were going to dedicate our life savings and our time to building an organization, we wanted to have a positive impact.’”

Entrepreneurs: In Cause Marketing You’re the Pretty Girl

Yesterday’s post hinted at a way nonprofits might identify entrepreneurs open to the idea of cause marketing. Today I want to suggest what a entrepreneur might look for in a cause partner.

There are at least 1.5 million 501(c)(3)s nonprofits in the United States. The term 501(c)(3) means that they can offer tax deductibility to their donors. Of those, less than 160,000 take in $1 million or more in revenue. A little more than half of that 1.5 million take in $100,000 or less.

Yesterday I mentioned that according to Census figures there are some 6 million firms in the United States with employees. In other words, there are a couple of businesses for every nonprofit charity.

Yet, despite that fact, to a cause looking for money businesses are like the pretty girl at the party. And if you’re a business with a charitable inclination you’re like Sofia Vergara pretty!

So how do you decide from among the suitors?

One option, of course, is that you don’t decide. That is, that you have relationships with many causes. The only thing wrong with that is that you miss out on the benefits of monogamy.

If polyandry’s not your style, what should you look for in a suitor?

A full list could be quite long, but for the sake of brevity I’m going to suggest just the three most important:

• Good, clear marketing positioning.
  

• Genuine willingness to support the partnership you’re going to build together.

• Strong leadership.

Strong leadership, of course, is rare anywhere. But it’s probably more so in the nonprofit than the for-profit sector. There’s reasons for this: the idea of really professional leadership is no more than two generations old in nonprofits. Before 1960 there just wasn’t any professional management to speak of outside of certain hospitals and universities. Even now, 50 years later, the most talented managers are always going to be better compensated in the for-profit sector. Finally, the very cultures of nonprofits all but demand consensus, something not every manager can abide with.

All nonprofits want your money and maybe your time. But not all of them really want a partner. To extend the pretty girl analogy, many of them are more interested in hooking up than getting hitched. There’s reasons for that, none the least of which is they’re worried about what kind of partner you’re likely to be.

Lastly, a big part of what the nonprofit is going to ask you to do is to activate or promote the sponsorship. And you’re going to bear most of the cost for that activation. Cause marketing is a form of co-branding. And co-branding is a whole lot easier if your partner is well known or at least easy to understand. You don’t want a partner whose mission you have to take extra pains to describe or explain. Ergo, a cause that has carefully defined its positioning in the marketplace is something to treasure.

Finding the Entrepreneur That Wants to Support Your Cause Marketing

The latest numbers show that causes are still being squeezed on two sides: by increasing demands for services; and by donation rates that trail the increase in demand. Cause marketing can help fill part of the shortfall. But, as ever, causes face the challenge of knowing just who to approach.

Wouldn’t it be great if there was some way for charities to know which business people are most likely to be open to their appeals?

A survey published in Inc Magazine has some broad answers for charity fundraisers looking to partner with businesspeople.

The survey results, published in the March 2012 issue of Inc, draw on the work of Professor Noam Wasserman, who teaches the popular course ‘Founders’ Dilemmas’ at Harvard Business School. Wasserman has a new book out called The Founder’s Dilemmas.

Wasserman asked ‘roughly 2,000’ business founders what motivates them to start and operate businesses. The answers, not surprisingly, are different for women than men and change over time for both sexes.

In order the top-ranked overall motivations are: Autonomy; Power and Influence; Managing People; Financial Gain; Altruism; Variety; and, Intellectual Challenge, a close cousin of Variety.

For women and men the top answer for business founders in their 20s, 30s and 40s is Autonomy. Interestingly, that is the polar opposite of what non-entrepreneurs say they care about most.

The fourth most frequent answer for women in their 20s, 30s and 40s is Altruism.

Altruism also registers as the third most frequent answer for men in their 40s.

Inc posits that perhaps men in their 40s, having focused on financial gain in the first two decades of their life, are now considering their legacies and are, therefore, more willing to make financial sacrifices as they age to support causes.

According to census figures, there are approximately 6 million enterprises with employees in the United States. Only a fraction of those companies are good candidates for cause marketing.

But for those that are good candidates, the take-home lesson from the Wasserman/Inc study is this: the entrepreneurs most likely to respond to appeals to their sense of altruism are female founders of any age and male founders in their 40s or older.

Happy hunting, friends!

Some Unsolicited Cause Marketing Advice to a Growing Race Series

Run Like a Mother is women’s-only 5K race that takes place on Mother’s Day in 12 cities across the United States. It sounds like a cause, but it’s not. Instead, each of the dozen races benefit their own causes. However, a couple of small cause marketing twists would give the race a huge advantage over its countless competitors.

Run Like a Mother (RLM) was founded by mother-of-three and fitness trainer Megan Searfoss. Megan started the race in Ridgefield, Connecticut in 2008 and, with the sponsorship of Redbook Magazine (see at the Redbook ad left), has expanded to 12 cities in 2012. The race has a kids’ component and a party after the race.

“The mission of Run Like a Mother,” the website says, “is to fuel a woman’s journey toward health and wellness. Empower with education and training programs. Inspire with communities, events and races. Enable through programs and partnerships.”

It strikes me as a fun race and a cool idea.

But I’d suggest that they make a couple of changes that would serve as additional motivation for the participants.

First, instead of dictating the benefiting cause RLM ought to let the women choose for themselves the cause they want to benefit from their race. RLM will get more buy-in that way. If that’s unworkable they ought to create a menu of perhaps 10 charities for participants to choose from, instead of just the one.

Second, RLM ought to offer prizes to mothers in certain categories. Only instead of giving prize money to the mother, give it to the cause that she has chosen. This is a 5k race after all, about 3.1 miles. It’s a ‘gateway’ race. A starting point meant to “fuel a woman’s journey to health and wellness.”

A few of the participants, like Searfoss herself, will be very fit. But many will not be. So RLM would be smart to make one of the motivations of the race about the causes that move them.

You could do the usual time and age categories. But why not also have ‘biggest family’ category, craziest costume, mother with the youngest (or oldest) child, biggest weight loss since the start of training, etc. If you had 10 categories per race and offered one $500 prize per category that would come to $5,000, which isn’t very expensive. But a $500 donation coming to a cause from a single person is actually a large and meaningful amount. An amount that likely would motivate someone to train and prepare for the race.