Paul Jones is a cause marketing consultant and coach, and the owner of Alden Keene & Associates, Inc. Causemarketing.biz, his blog, is the go-to source for tens of thousands of marketers worldwide.
It's been my pleasure to receive great advice from many people who asked nothing in return other than that I 'pay it forward.'
So if you're in Salt Lake City or visiting and would like to talk about cause-related marketing specifically, or marketing in general, then take me to lunch.
I'll give you my best advice and when we're done I'll just push the tab over to your side of the table.
Not in Salt Lake City, but still want to talk? Then send me your questions on the back of $50 gift certificate from Ruth's Chris and I'll contemplate them over a ribeye steak. [I'm kidding. Mostly].
Right now Americans are wrestling over the issue of the Affordable Health Care Act, aka 'Obamacare.'
But there's no need to wrestle over the issue of the blogosphere's largest, most comprehensive cause marketing site.
It's all right here!
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It couldn’t be easier to subscribe. Simply send me your name and your email address to aldenkeene at gmail dot com.
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It's a great brainstorming tool that helps ensure your cause marketing campaigns have all the appropriate components.
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And not just free, but free from obligation and worry. Because, rest assured, I will never sell your name or contact information. No matter what.
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Patagonia, that region of Chile and Argentina at the southern tip of South America famous for its beauty and end-of-the-earth ruggedness, had a terrible fire in 2011 that left vast areas denuded of trees. Now a Santiago, Chile-based cause called Reforest Patagonia is working to replant a million trees in four of Chile’s national parks and reserves, and they’re asking for your help.
Here’s how it works: they ask that you go to www.reforestpatagonia.com and donate $4. They’ll plant a tree in your name and email you the gps coordinates of where your tree will be planted.
I conducted a Twitter interview… my first ever… with Brenna Loury, an American by birth, but a Chilean by adoption. She got her start in Chile working for Habitat for Humanity there. That’s my first question and Brenna’s response in 140 characters or less at the left.
My thanks to Brenna for her double-quick responses to my questions.
@ReforestPatagon Q2: What’s your organization’s mission?
@paulrjones Mission: to recover one of the world’s most important ecosystems (Chilean Patagonia) by planting 1M trees before the year's end.
@ReforestPatagon Q3: I think of Patagonia as being wild and untamed. How severe is the deforestation there?
@paulrjones 42,500 acres in Torres del Paine National Park, one of Chile's top ecosystems/destinations, were destroyed in last year's fire.
@ReforestPatagon Q4: Who are the main people involved?
@paulrjones the main ppl involved are those that you can see in this album: http://ow.ly/bRm2p. We also have major sponsors like @LAN_CL.
@ReforestPatagon Q5: How does the replanting work?
@paulrjones ppl buy their trees of 3 native species and receive their GPS here: http://ow.ly/bRmsx– our team in Patagonia plants them.
@ReforestPatagon Q6: Tell me about your promotion?
@paulrjones trees are worth $4 & our goal is to sell/plant 1M before the year's end by pairing w/ public/private institutions & individuals.
@ReforestPatagon Q7: Where did the idea come from?
@paulrjones the idea came from the great pain that was evoked from the fire in Torres del Paine in 2011. We felt a powerful call to action.
@ReforestPatagon Q8: What are your goals for the promotion?
@paulrjones 1 million trees sold & planted in Chile's pristine Patagonia by the year's end! Trees can be bought here: http://ow.ly/bRn9K!
@ReforestPatagon Q9: How are you promoting it?
@paulrjones in digital & traditional press, social media, among organizations, & word of mouth. Our intn'l campaign is just kicking off :)
@ReforestPatagon Q10: How will you use the money raised?
@paulrjones the money goes to planting trees and the campaign's costs. #ReforestPatagonia is 100% non-profit.
@ReforestPatagon Q11: How long will the promotion continue?
@paulrjones the campaign will last at least until the end of the year or until we reach our goal of planting 1 Million trees.
@ReforestPatagon Q12: What kind of response have you gotten so far from English-speaking countries? What about the Latin countries?
@paulrjones an incredibly overwhelming response here in #Chile & we're hoping for the same as we expand #ReforestPatagonia internationally.
@ReforestPatagon Q13: What suggestions do you have for NPO/NGOs considering something like this?
@paulrjones be transparent, gather an outstanding team that executes, and use communication tools to the max!
@ReforestPatagon Q14: Is there anything else you’d like to add?
@paulrjones to learn more abt this (literally) groundbreaking campaign & to plant your tree pls visit: http://ow.ly/bRpoV. Thank you!! :D
Twice now I’ve written about cause marketing campaigns that can be summed up in six-words. Both times I heard back from readers inspired to pen their own cause marketing summation in six-words. Now I’m coming back to the topic because L.L. Bean, the Maine retailer and catalog company, is using a six-word statement as a tagline for its cause marketing effort called 'Million Moment Mission.'
The six-word line is; “You Share. We Give. Kids Win.”
Here’s how it works: any time you perform a qualifying action… a like on Facebook, a Tweet, submit a story and/or photo about your experience with L.L. Bean’s merchandise or in the great outdoors…the company will donate $1 to programs for kids from the National Park Foundation. The tagline, therefore, distills the campaign very well.
The Million Moment Mission is a promotion in celebration of Bean’s 100th year in business. The campaign started on January 1, 2012 and wraps on December 31, 2012. The total donation is capped at $1 million.
The idea for these six-word statements stems from a story about Ernest Hemingway, the fine American writer of the last century who would be 113 years old this year. (The tale may even be true.)
As the story goes, Hemingway was having drinks with a literary agent. Hemingway was justly famous for his brand of manly (I can’t think of a more appropriate adjective) and compact fiction.
The agent bets that even Hemingway can’t come up with a story with genuine pathos and real emotional punch in just six words. Hemingway takes the bet and responds with this: “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.”
Not bad, right?
The anecdote was largely forgotten until it was resurrected with the book Not Quite What I was Planning: Six-Word Memoirs by Writers Famous and Obscure by Rachel Ferschleiser and Larry Smith.
Most of the book was crowd-sourced with people submitting their six-word statements via Twitter. Here’s a few of the published winners:
“Danced in fields of infinite possibilities.” Deepak Chopra
“Brought it to a boil, often.” Mario Batali
And, two personal favorites…
“Found true love after nine months.” Jody Smith
“Wasn’t born a redhead; fixed that.” Andie Grace
I frequently advise my clients sum up their cause marketing in six words. What I typically find is that six words is enough to do the job, but not enough to begin to obfuscate. The L.L. Bean case bears this out, I think.
I’m not talking about writing headlines here. Headlines are meant to draw you into the text that follows. Six-word stories tell complete a complete, if brief, story.
And what almost everyone finds is that writing six-word statements is more fun and lots easier than they imagined going in.
Try it and you’ll see what I mean
Do you have a six-word cause marketing statement you’d like to share? Please comment below.
Not all cause marketing is meant to get directly you to buy something. Sometimes it’s meant to get you to try something you might not otherwise consider.
In this instance, AAA of Northern California, an auto club that also includes the states of Nevada and Utah, wants their members to see how competitive their auto insurance rates are. And the offer is almost ripped from the headlines of today’s news.
When you call for an auto insurance quote, AAA of Northern California will make a $5 donation to unnamed groups that support state parks in California, Nevada, and Utah, up to a total of $100,000.
Although all three states are facing budgetary pressures in the downturn, the Golden State has been especially hard hit. California has plans to shutter as many as 70 of the state’s 279 state parks on July 1, 2012.
Aside from the timeliness, this cause marketing promotion is an especially close fit between AAA and the cause. Members of auto clubs, it goes almost without saying, have automobiles. And in the American West an automobile is almost the only way to get to many state parks. That Mars-scape to the left is Goblin Valley State Park in my home state of Utah and there is no town with more than 50,000 residents closer than 250 miles from the park.
To give you an idea of how remote that is, if you put a pin in a map where New York City is and strung out a piece of yarn from the pin that represented a 250 mile-radius, that radius would take in all of the Tri-State area, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., Boston, and Baltimore. Tens of million of people live within that 250-mile radius.
There’s a few state parks in Nevada that are even further still from any city of consequence than Goblin Valley State Park is.
Not all cause marketing means to have you purchase something right now. And AAA of Northern California has developed a cause marketing campaign that has real appeal.
What do affluent travelers want from airlines, hotels, resorts, tour operators and cruise lines when it comes to corporate social responsibility?
Conde Nast Traveler, whose magazine has about 810,000 affluent subscribers asked its readers some of those very questions and more and published the results in September 2011.
Here are responses to select Conde Nast Traveler questions:
Ninety-three percent said travel companies should be responsible for 'protecting the environment.'
What might protecting the environment look like according to Traveler readers:?
63 percent said building energy-efficient buildings.
76 percent said using solar power
69 percent said reuse towel (there’s the low-handing fruit for any hotel or resort)
63 percent said install low-flow toilets and showers
54 percent said use less air conditioning
51 percent said reuse wastewater
12 percent said provide carbon offsets through fees
The long-hanging fruit there is plainly reusing towels.
Likewise, 82 percent said that it’s fine if sheets get changed twice-weekly instead of daily, so as to conserve water.
Fifty-eight percent said that their choice of hotel is influenced by the support it gives to the local community.
When asked what the ideal length of time to do volunteer service during a luxury resort stay 44 percent said half a day, 39 percent said one day, 11 percent said two days, and 6 percent said more than 2 days.
Many of these issues are about communications, in some cases communicating what resorts, hotels, airlines, cruise lines and other travel companies are already doing. Eighty-six percent said they’d like hotels to explain how their contributing to their communities and the environment. Eighty percent asked the same thing of airlines.
What all this suggests to me is that companies in the travel business need to put their environmental, corporate social responsibility and cause marketing bona fides closer to the decision point. That section on corporate websites that talks about corporate social responsibility is just too far removed from where someone books their flights or rooms.
This is tricky business given that there are so many places to book a flight or a room these days that are acting only as agents.
In short, I see the need for some kind of a seal from a trusted third-party that asserts that the company displaying the seal meets some kind threshold for corporate social responsibility and environmental stewardship.
Back in 2007 and 2008 Hamburger Helper ran a fun cause marketing promotion called My Hometown Helper that I don’t remember at all. In fact, there’s nothing about it at www.myhometownhelper.com, the campaign’s old website. Dial up that URL and you’ll be redirected to hamburgerhelper.com. If not for the Alden Keene Cause Marketing Database and the long tail of the Internet, My Hometown Helper would be just a distant memory for the Hamburger Helper brand manager and the recipients of the grants.
Here’s what a press release from General Mills, which owns the Hamburger Helper brand, said about the campaign in February 2008.
“Today, Hamburger Helper announces the call for entries to the 2008 "My Hometown Helper" grant program, a nationwide initiative that lends a "helping hand" to local groups making a difference in their community. People looking to improve their hometown -- from helping fund a volunteer fire department, to restoring a town landmark, to supporting a local school -- are encouraged to submit their entries before time runs out. From February 1st to March 31st, communities seeking support can visit www.myHometownHelper.com to apply online for a one-time grant to help fund a local project.
“’Our communities are incredibly important to us," said Hyun Mee Graves, Marketing Manager for Hamburger Helper. ‘Last fall's 'My Hometown Helper' grant program was a tremendous success, and we are reaching out to more communities in need with a second wave of the program this spring. We're dedicated to supporting projects that are making a difference right in your hometown.’
“Between February 1st and March 31st, applicants can submit an essay of 250 words or less describing how the grant would help with their community project. Award amounts will range from $500 to $15,000 and all requests for funding must be sponsored by a charitable organization, municipal or civic organization, or a public school. Funds will be awarded based on the merit of the project, including its impact on, and support within, the community, among other factors….
“Last year, 'My Hometown Helper' gave away more than $200,000 in grants and helped communities purchase new band equipment, build a school playground and fund a tornado warning system, among other great projects.”
I love cause marketing campaigns that go on for year after year because they build equity and momentum. Since every cause marketing effort isn’t likely to be a winner, one way to look at short-lived campaigns is that they’re a vital part of the process of learning what does and does not work.
In such cases, failure IS an option is a helpful mindset (unless you got astronauts trying to get home alive from an orbit of the moon. In which case, failure is not an option).
The problem with failure is that sometimes it’s just too darn slow. Think about it, in the movie Apollo 13, what saved astronauts Jim Lovell, Jack Swigert, and Fred Haise was that the engineers and technicians back in Houston failed really fast on their way to an eventual solution.
What cause marketing needs right now is causes and sponsors who are willing to risk failure in order to find the cause marketing campaign that really sings. And they need to fail in Internet time. That is, quickly.
Like Eric Ries, preaches in his book, the Lean Startup we cause marketers have got to find cheaper, faster ways to test the market potential of different cause marketing approaches. It’s not enough anymore to build something and then hope people like what you built.
Such an approach will take nerves of steel, the faith of a saint and, probably, the Internet, which enables failure to be quickly gauged.
I’m delighted to offer a guest post today by my friend and cause marketing colleague David Hessekiel, the founder and president of the Cause Marketing Forum and the co-author of the new book on cause marketing called Good Works, out as June 5, 2012. David co-wrote Good Works with marketing legend Phillip Kotler and Nancy Lee.
Today David tackles the issue of just how big cause marketing is and how we can get to a more meaningful measure of its size and dimensions. For years the only calculation we’ve had is IEG’s annual projection of how much companies plan on spending on cause marketing in the year to comes. As a gauge of cause marketing it’s a little determining the health of your car by measuring how much air pressure is in the back right tire. It’s inadequate and not very telling.
One of the fabulous yet sometimes frustrating aspects of cause marketing is its diversity.
Some campaigns focus on raising funds (buy this and we’ll give a dime), others concentrate on sharing a message (join us in supporting this cause), some try to change behavior (change your smoke detector battery). Most are hybrids of the above with a healthy dose of employee engagement, corporate philanthropy and socially responsible business practices thrown in.
This assortment of activities makes the field fascinating, but makes quantifying how much cause marketing is going on very difficult.
I confronted this issue while co-authoring “Good Works! Marketing and Corporate Social Initiatives that Build a Better World and the Bottom Line.” Like most of us in the field, I referred to the IEG Sponsorship Report’s annual forecast of total sponsorship spending. (This year, for example, cause is expected to attract $1.73 billion in corporate sponsorship, a 3.1% increase and 10% share of total sponsorship spending.)
I was glad to have this information as a directional guide, but it is a poor proxy for all the spending going on at the intersection of cause and commerce. IEG does not share its methodology, beyond saying that it surveys numerous corporations and then uses some sort of formula to come up with totals for expected corporate investment in the sports, entertainment, cause and other sponsorship sectors.
I’m quite sure IEG does not capture investment in or value generated by cause campaigns in the form of paid or earned media, skilled and unskilled employee volunteer labor or money contributed by consumers through the purchase of paper icons or via donations online or at checkout.
And I don’t fault them for not doing so. Companies are reticent at best about revealing marketing budgets. Capturing and valuing earned media and employee volunteerism are inexact sciences with great variations based on who is analyzing the data.
I’d love to be able to announce that my company, Cause Marketing Forum, is going to produce an omnibus study serving up all of this data in a nice tidy report, but we can’t.
We are, however, going to put in the work to add a few data points to the equation in the form of some illuminating top ten lists to be published in 2013. Right now we are thinking of the Ten Largest Transactional Programs (I assume.General Mills’ Boxtops for Education would be #1) and the Ten Largest In-Store Fundraising Programs (e.g. Macy’s Shop for a Cause or Chili’s Create-A-Pepper to Fight Childhood Cancer).
Now is the time to let us know if there are other cause-related top ten lists based on publicly available quantitative data that you’d like to get your hands on.
One of my ongoing complaints with a lot of cause marketing activation is the degree to which sponsors seem to want to keep their distance from their partner cause (or visa versa). There’s none of that in this ad for Pur, which really 'owns' its longstanding commitment to clean water in Africa.
Pur, which is a water purifier brand from Procter & Gamble, offers a straightforward transactional cause marketing effort. Buy various Pur products online and the company will send water purification packets to needy African countries.
Since 2008, Pur packets have treated more than 1.6 billion liters of water. P&G developed the packets itself, which contain a powder that purifies and disinfects a liter of bad water.
What I like about this ad that I found in the Alden Keene Cause Marketing Database is the degree to which Pur really entwines its brand with the cause.
While the main art is about the family benefits of Pur’s in-home water filtration offerings, half the body copy is devoted to the cause. The other photo, which is much smaller, but nonetheless prominent, illustrates well the cause. An African child is drinking clean water from a Pur-labeled cup held by his mother.
It goes without saying that few things are more important to human life and development than clean water. And so Pur can legitimately claim to be saving lives.
Cause marketing can add an emotional dimension to a sponsor’s product or service. But only to the degree that sponsors really embrace it.
Learn a lesson here from one of the most accomplished cause marketers around, Procter & Gamble.
A recent trip to the grocery store turned into an opportunity to scope out some packaged goods cause marketing.
I started near the bakery side of the store and then made my way to drinks aisle, looking for cause marketing wherever I could find it.
Here are 14 that caught my eye.
505 Southwestern
This is a simple transactional cause marketing effort that runs year-round. By transactional cause marketing I mean that when you buy the jar, it triggers a donation to an unnamed breast cancer cause (or causes). Normally, this would require the consent of the cause. But since 505 uses only the pink ribbon, which is not trademarked/copyrighted, no permission is required. Although 505 would be prudent to report on its website the amounts donated to which causes.
Kitchen Basics Beef Stock
This product carries a seal of approval from the American Heart Association. The most famous such seals are the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval and the American Dental Association seal. Generally you get a seal when you demonstrate that the product meets guidelines set by the granting organization. Sometimes this can be very rigorous. The Good Housekeeping Seal includes an insurance policy of sorts, so their standards are quite high. Also, all seals have a fee associated with them, which can be pretty hefty.
Dr. Pepper Let’s Play
Let’s Play is a program founded by Dr. Pepper Snapple Group to encourage the physical activity of kids and families. I assume that this is partly a defensive measure. In that formulation Dr. Pepper Snapple Group is looking down the road 10 or 15 years expecting that sugary soft drinks will be regulated like tobacco in the United States. The goal of the 3-year-effort is to build or fix up 2,000 playgrounds in conjunction with the nonprofit KaBoom! Effectively it gives Dr. Pepper Snapple Group a little coverage, enabling them to say to policy makers and regulators something like, “from 2010 to 2013, we helped 5 million kids to be more active by building or renovating thousands of playgrounds.”
Betty Crocker Supreme Bars
The Betty Crocker brand is owned by General Mills, which is the founding sponsor of Box Tops for Education. For every Box Top redeemed through schools, that school gets $0.10. Box Tops runs year-round. Since 1996, Box Tops has donated more that $445 million in cash to the nation’s schools. It’s real money and most schools have a secretary or PTA official whose job is to help collect and manage the school’s Box Tops redemption. For several years now General Mills has invited participation from non-competing brands.
My Coke Rewards
Strictly speaking My Coke Rewards isn’t a cause marketing effort, it’s a loyalty program. But it warrants mention here because you can transfer your reward points to causes like the American Cancer Society, the USO, the National Parks Foundation, and others. The Coca-Cola product Sprite has used the My Coke Rewards platform to build new school playgrounds. Based on a sweepstakes-style promotion, consumers were asked to nominate a school. Winning schools got $25,000.
Diet Coke, The Heart Truth
Although most people are surprised by this, it’s a fact that many more women in the United States die of heart disease than breast cancer. Diet Coke’s support of The Heart Truth, a campaign developed by the National Institutes for Health, is largely one of raising awareness. But you can also donate My Coke Rewards points to The Heart Truth campaign.
Keebler Be a Good Cookie for the American Red Cross Blood Donation
In the United States the Red Cross has a Congressionally-mandated mission to be a first responder to national emergency situations. It’s also in charge of the nation’s blood supply. This cause marketing effort is primarily meant to raise awareness of the continual need for blood donations. But Keebler also donates a cookie to everyone who donates blood to the American Red Cross. Keebler figures that will come to about 6 million cookies.
Honest Kids
Honest Kids are juice packs from the company Honest Tea. They offer a tree planting effort in partnership with the National Arbor Day Foundation, a tree-planting charity. When you send in the UPC codes from 5 Honest Kids 8-pack boxes and $2, the Arbor Day Foundation will send you a seedling tree to plant.
Peter Pan Peanut Butter for Feeding America
ConAgra, which owns the Peter Pan peanut butter brand, is a major supporter of Feeding America, the anti-hunger charity. Feeding America is basically a consortium of the nation’s local food banks. It secures in-kind donations from large food companies and sponsorships like this one. Like the 505 Southwestern, this is a transactional cause marketing effort. Every jar of Peter Pan yields one meal that is redeemed when you enter the code on the jar.
Kellogg’s Smart Start Cereal
Like the Peter Pan promotion, Kellogg’s Smart Start is promoting a feeding effort, called Share Your Breakfast - Share Hope. Share Hope is Kellogg’s own effort, there is no one charity that Kellogg’s benefits, although the breakfasts are distributed via local food banks. Its focus is on sharing breakfasts with children. There’s several aspects to Share Hope, but the overall goal is to share one million breakfasts during the promotional period. The Smart Start promotion offers a collector’s spoon for $3 and one UPC code. Each spoon purchased yields one breakfast.
Kroger Bringing Hope to the Table
Bringing Hope is another feeding effort, this time from retail giant Kroger. The goal is 25 million meals and the way they go about it is in co-promotions with its vendors. Typically the way these promotions work is that Kroger requires some kind of fee and in exchange the vendor gets preferred placement in the store. This was on an end-cap near the dairy side of the store on the front-end. The vendor might also get placement in the weekly flier. Part of the money that Kroger generates goes to providing the 25 million meals.
Swanson’s Beef Stock
This is another label-clipping effort that benefits local schools called Labels for Education. ‘Labels’ was founded years before Box Tops. The major difference is that ‘Labels’ are redeemed for points, instead of cash. Schools accumulate points and can order from an online catalog of several thousand items. Like Box Tops, non-competing brands are invited to participate.
Newman’s Own
Newman’s Own is what’s called an ‘all-benefits company.’ It’s a for-profit that exists solely so as to pay out profits after taxes to worthy charities, hence its slogan “All Profits to Charity.” Since 1982, the company has donated more than $330 million to charities. Another all-benefits company is Geoffrey Beene, which sells fashion goods for men and women.
Nature Valley Granola Thins
Nature Valley is another General Mills brand that’s had an ongoing sponsorship relationship with two causes. One is the National Parks Conservation Association and the other is youth golf, believe it or not. This promotion with its Granola Thins product has two parts. Nature Valley will donate a guaranteed $300,000 to the National Parks Conservation Association. And, for every, UPC code redeemed online, it will donate an extra $1 up to $200,000. The total donation could thereby total $500,000. Nature Valley also created a video ‘trail view’ of 330 miles of prominent National Park trails using a technique similar to Google Streetview, and then put them online.
‘Yadelin,’ a hospitality student, in a comment posted earlier this month about a post I wrote about using cause marketing to fund a charity’s endowment, expresses surprise that cause marketing could be considered to be about raising funds. Yadelin learned in a corporate responsibility class that cause marketing is primarily about raising awareness. With this post I respond to Yadelin.
Cause marketing can certainly be about awareness raising. But it can also be used to motivate all kinds of behavior. My cell phone service provider has used cause marketing to motivate customers to switch to electronic statements.
My local electric utility has used cause marketing to incentivize me to allow the company to put a switch on my air conditioning unit that they allows them to turn off my air conditioning during periods of peak demand.
On the left, Whirlpool, which makes major household appliances like washers, dryers and refrigerators, used elements of cause marketing to draw volunteers to a Habitat for Humanity community build back in Dallas back in 2008. The ad comes from the Alden Keene Cause Marketing Database.
Jewelery for a Cause uses cause marketing to take guns off the streets and then turns them into jewelry, potentially lowering violent crime rates.
But notwithstanding what you’re learning in you corporate responsibility class, in North America cause marketing is most often used to generate funds for causes. Jewelry for a Cause, for instance, also makes donations to organizations like the American Heart Association and the Alzheimer's Association. And the money generated via cause marketing is especially valuable because it's unrestricted.
Let me explain.
For causes, funds raised via cause marketing are generally unrestricted. That means that the charity/cause is free to use the money as it deems best. This is in sharp contrast to the way much (maybe even most) causes are funded these days.
Relatively few foundation or government grants to charities are unrestricted. Instead they require that the grants be used in very specific ways, oftentimes without funds for any overhead or capital expenses. Likewise major donors commonly demand restrictions on how their donations are used. Even funds from smaller individual donors might be solicited to buy a new van for the food bank, or an ECMO machine for the hospital. When donations to a cause are solicited for specific purposes, using it in any other way is, of course, unethical.
Do causes need incentive to keep their ‘noses clean’ besides the law and the culture? Almost certainly.
But all the restrictions on donations mean that causes frequently chase ideas that aren’t aligned with their missions because funders have one kind of hobby horse or another. If I put out word that I had $50 million to give to one or more causes to find definitive proof of Sasquatch I can guarantee that would hear from dozens of interested charities, many of whom don’t have a Sasquatch-chasing mission or purpose.
Many critics of cause marketing think of it as frivolous or inconsequential. But the fact that you have to persuade not just one person but many in order for it to work means that cause marketing benefits from the wisdom of crowds.
I have, for instance, never seen a cause marketing campaign for Sasquatch hunters.
The other day a reporter asked me if doing something unethical was ever a temptation for causes engaging in cause marketing.
These days plenty of skeptics would say that the question answers itself. Cause marketing, especially the transactional variety, is inherently unethical according to thinkers like Mara Einstein, a professor at Queens College in New York and author of Compassion, Inc.
Einstein’s basic argument against cause marketing goes like this: cause marketing is too simple and too far removed from complex problems to really do good. Moreover it desensitizes (her word) consumers in the process. Einstein’s book “takes us through the unseen ways in which large sums of consumer dollars go into corporate coffers rather than helping the less fortunate,” according to the publisher’s blurb.
I haven’t read the book yet, but I assume the blurb is referencing the fact that some cause marketing sponsors cap their donation amount and thereby benefit should people continue to buy their product after the promotion has ended. Because, obviously, “large sums of consumer dollars go into corporate coffers rather than helping the less fortunate” every day, whether or not there’s a cause attached.
Surprisingly, given the alienation from causes that Dr. Einstein decries in transactional cause marketing, she is nonetheless in favor of old-school corporate philanthropy. Although how a consumer is any closer to complex problems when General Electric writes a million-dollar check from its corporate foundation than when ten million people buy a carton of Yoplait isn’t clear to me.
But my response to the reporter went something like this. I happen to know that Joe Waters, my friend and colleague and author of Cause Marketing for Dummies is a happily married man and a proud father. But if you pressed him he might admit to being attracted to supermodel Heidi Klum, seen at the left. So in the strictest sense of the term, Heidi Klum is potentially a moral hazard for Joe.
But, for the sake of argument, let’s say that Joe has never met the woman. Let’s further say that he’s never had any interaction with her and, moreover, that he has no likely pathway to Heidi Klum. So, in the real world, Heidi Klum isn’t a temptation for Joe in a way that she might be for her happily-married driver or manager or gardener or someone else who has ready access to her.
In a like way, no more than 100 charities in the United States almost certainly account for 80 percent of the cause marketing dollars raised. I’m pretty confident that the largest 20 cause-marketing charities account for more than 50 percent of the cause marketing dollars raised. Those 100 charities are actually in the position to be tempted to take unethical actions when it comes to cause marketing just because the deals they do are for millions of dollars. Real Heidi Klum money.
Let me put the scale of this another way; if I listed all the top 100 charities that do cause marketing and put in still-readable 8 point type and printed it out on a sheet of 8.5” x 11” paper, I could cover the whole list with my hand. It's just not that many charities.
Is unethical behavior in cause marketing a cause for concern for those 100 charities? You bet it is. So their management and boards have to be ever-vigilant.
Is it possible that the thousands of causes that split up the remaining 20 percent of cause marketing dollars could also put themselves in moral hazard with regard to cause marketing? Of course.
But like the pretend temptation that Heidi Klum poses for Joe Waters, it’s not quite the same.
Zynga has been using cause marketing for more than two years now and other game developers are taking note. Mobile game developer XEOPlay offers Tilt World that helps to reforest Madagascar, the world’s fourth largest island and a hotspot for biodiversity, owing to its relative isolation. Lemurs, a member of the primate family, are the nation-state’s most recognized denizens.
Just as Lemurs are a branch of the primate family Tilt World is related to Mario Brothers and Pac-Man/Ms. Pac-Man. The goal is for Flip, a tadpole, to eat carbon molecules, plant mushrooms, recycle bottle caps and capture fireflies as an alternative energy source.
There’s 15 levels and points earned in the game translate to tree seeds purchased for and on behalf of the tree-planting charity WeForest. XEOPlay’s goal is to plant 1 million trees in Madagascar, which suffers from the effects of deforestation.
My description makes it all sound a little bit earnest, but Tilt World looks fun. I haven’t had the chance to play it yet, but the graphics look good and Tilt World makes good use of the accelerometers in your iPhone.
Zynga’s growth is said to be slowing due to the rise of mobile gaming, so I’m glad to see a mobile gaming company take up the cause marketing banner.
In Zen Buddhism there is the notion of a 'koan,' which is a riddle, statement, question or dialogue that can’t be understood through strictly rational thought. A koan is intended to help train the mind to better access intuition, especially through meditation The most famous koan might be ‘what is the sound of one hand clapping?’
Here’s one for cause marketers; ‘when is cause marketing not a partnership?’
The rational mind says that cause marketing is always a partnership. The riddle makes no sense. Except in cases where the sponsor is the cause there’s always at least two parties. Like Tim Burton and Johnny Depp or Scoreese and De Niro. Boom. There’s two parties and when they come together that’s a partnership.
But meditate on it a little longer and you can see when cause marketing might not be a partnership. When one party benefits in gross disproportion to the other. Or when one party doesn’t work to make sure that the putative partner benefits to his or her satisfaction.
Cause marketing partners, like Hollywood actors and directors, are free agents. George Clooney and Steven Soderbergh have done six films together. If one of them doesn’t feel like they’ve benefited from their frequent pairings then they’re unlikely to do a seventh.
There’s no partnership in cause marketing unless all parties to the agreement feel fully benefited.
How do you achieve that?
Well Depp and Burton basically finish each others' sentences. But not every successful partnership requires that level of intimacy.
In cause marketing it starts during the courtship between the parties. While there will be plenty of formal written language as the parties determine the scope of the agreement, it’s vital that the process also include less formal conversations; people from both parties need to speak directly with each other.
For a true partnership to emerge a key portion of that dialogue must include the good faith expectation that both sides will and should benefit to their satisfaction. Everybody has to have their say. Neither side should endeavor to take advantage of the other. And, if it feels like the other party is trying to do so, you must register your dissatisfaction.
If, after going through the process, it feels like your would-be partner isn’t negotiating in good faith, you must be prepared to walk away from the partnership. This can be especially difficult for needy nonprofits. But it’s absolutely essential.
Finally, you must also try and put yourself in the shoes of the other party. Ask, “if roles were reversed, what would I want from this deal?’ The ability to understand what the other party wants and needs is a vital part of long and rewarding partnership.
In 1946 Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly did an extended song and dance number called the Babbitt and the Bromide in the 1946 MGM musical Ziegfeld Follies. (That’s it on the left) The music was by George and Ira Gershwin and the choreography by Astaire and Kelly, the only time they collaborated while both men were yet in their prime. One thing you notice is that Astaire’s blue socks are visible because his pants were hemmed rather high.
It was a classic case of showmanship.
As was typical of the choreography of both men, when Astaire and Kelly danced together their steps mirrored each other. Moreover, they're dressed identically. Why, then, was the great Astaire wearing ‘floods’? In 1946 Astaire was already 47 years old and Kelly was 13 years his junior. By rights Kelly should have left Astaire in the dust. But still I couldn’t help looking first and most often at the immortal Fred Astaire.
(A few years later in the 1954 MGM musical Brigadoon, Kelly did the exact same thing to his dance co-star Van Johnson by wearing high-hemmed pants showing red socks. Van Johnson was four years younger than Kelly.)
Little wonder, I suppose. Fred Astaire was so talented, a famous perfectionist, and a grindingly hard worker yet he still somehow managed to make every step look fluid and easy.
So much so that when the great Latvian dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov was considering defecting to the West during the bad old Soviet days, one thing that gave him pause was that all American dancers might be as skilled as Fred Astaire or Gene Kelly!
Baryshnikov once said of Astaire, “His perfection gives us complexes, because he’s too perfect. His perfection is an absurdity that’s hard to face.”
In short, Fred Astaire was practicing showmanship. Maybe even gamesmanship.
Like Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire you may be doing the same dance… the same bunch of cause marketing steps… that other sponsors or respectable and worthy causes are doing.
What do you do to stand out?
More on that in a moment.
John Wayne practiced showmanship, too. I saw an interview wherein he confessed that he developed his famous rolling walk early in his career… when he wasn’t the featured actor… so that when he was in a scene he couldn’t be missed, even as a secondary character.
And it’s not just performers who employ the tricks and techniques of showmanship to make them get noticed.
Ronald Reagan may have won the 1984 election in a debate with Walter Mondale when he said at age 73, "I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent's youth and inexperience.”
Someone wrote that joke for Reagan; it certainly wasn’t impromptu. But as a showman Reagan knew exactly when to bust it out. Even Mondale laughed at the time. What else could he do?
A showman’s greatest technique might be his professionalism or apparent imperturbability. The American writer Mark Twain had intertwining careers as both a writer and a speaker. When he spoke his humor and wit seemed perfectly off-the-cuff. But that was only because his preparations were so exhaustive. Twain would script not only his text, but also his asides and quips, and then rehearse it all until he appeared to be speaking extemporaneously. The great British wartime Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who we think of as an unflappable man of the moment, was also a man of meticulous speech preparations.
Some of the same lessons apply to cause marketing.
If you’re a charity or sponsor, look around. No matter how worthy your cause or campaign, you’ve got competition. For money and attention.
How do you make sure that your campaign stands out?
I've already offered three suggestions. Fred Astaire and Ronald Reagan practiced great showmanship. Mark Twain and Winston Churchill prepared and polished with enormous professionalism. All of them were tireless workers.
And all brought great panache to their performances.
But by showmanship I don’t mean “cutting through the clutter,” per se. We all are bombarded by thousands of messages a day, commercial and otherwise. That’s clutter. One of the appeals of cause marketing is that by itself it can help cut through the clutter.
Instead, what I want to highlight are three media choices that can help your cause marketing campaign ‘flash a little blue sock’ while everyone else contents themselves to show you their plain old pant leg.
For a ‘sale’ (whatever that means to you) to take place a customer typically moves from awareness of your product/service along a continuum to interest, then to desire, commitment and finally action.
For the sake of brevity let’s just say that there are six basic tactical media choices available to marketers:
Mass media (in its many varieties)
Public relations
Direct mail
Internet including social media
Events
Personal communications.
Depending on the campaign, the audience and the budget, all may have a role to play. But the most efficient media are those that can move the sales process from interest to action in one fell swoop. While there are always exceptions, mass media can’t do that. Neither can public relations or direct mail.
But certainly the Internet and social media can. So too can events and personal communications.
As you plan your cause marketing campaigns work to make the most of these three media.
Do it right, with showmanship, professionalism, hard work, and panache, and like Fred Astaire it will be your campaign people notice, no matter who else is also dancing.
Academic research in cause marketing has long centered around the degree to which the practice affected things like reputation, goodwill, consumer loyalty, or how cause marketing could preserve pricing power. A new study finds that a corporation’s ‘pro-social activities’ positively influence how consumers feel about how their actual products perform.
The study, called 'Doing Well By Doing Good: The Benevolent Halo of Social Goodwill' featured a series of four experiments by Sean Blair, a PhD candidate at Northwestern University, and Alexander Chernov, and associate professor of marketing at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern.
In the first experiment attendees at an executive education seminar were given wine to taste in plastic cup. A card accompanied the wine that described the winery that made the wine. Some of the tasters read a card with a sentence that explained that the wine donated 10% of sales to the American Heart Association. Other tasters saw no such sentence. After sampling the wine the tasters were asked to rate the wine on a 9-point scale.
Tasters that saw the sentence rated the wine significantly better than those who did not. But wine experts were hardly moved compared to non-experts.
In the second experiment, Blair and Chernov recruited people via Mechanical Turk, Amazon’s online crowdsourcing platform. Some were put in a concrete mindset with a question (list five ways you exercise) versus others that were put an abstract mindset with another question (list five reasons why you exercise). Both those in the concrete and abstract mindset were provided the same information about the company, but some were also told about the company’s socially responsible behaviors. Some were also told that the company donated 15 percent of its revenues to a diabetes research cause.
Then the subjects were shown a picture of a shoe from the company and asked to rate on a 9 point scale how comfortable they thought it would be. People in the abstract mindset were significantly more affected by the cause association than those in the concrete mindset.
In the third experiment the researchers tried to dial the results in a little. Would the ‘positive effect demonstrated in the first two experiments… be more pronounced when the domain of the social goodwill is not directly related to the company’s products”? Again, Mechanical Turk was utilized. Respondents were asked about four products; sunscreen, laundry detergent, bug spray and air conditioner refrigerant. Sometimes the information the respondents were given referenced product attributes (‘chemical-free’) others were told about cause marketing donations to an environmental cause.
Those shown the information about the cause marketing donation, what the experimenters term ‘charity condition’ believed that the products in question would significantly outperform than those who were told about product attributes.
The final experiment pitted claims made in corporate advertisements versus those made by an independent entity, in this case a by nonprofit organization that was said to evaluate corporate claims.
In this experiment, “the researchers find that the benevolent halo effect is a function of consumer beliefs about a firm’s motivation, such that it is attenuated when consumers suspect that the social goodwill is motivated by self-interest.”
I’m glad for the fourth experiment in particular as a counter-balance to the findings in the first three. If all it took for companies to improve consumers perceptions of their products was to launch a straight-forward transactional cause marketing effort then the potential for abuse would be high.
This is terrific study, worth your time to drill down on.
This post is number 850 of causemarketing.biz, which gives me all the excuse I need to invite you to join Cause Marketing Newsgroup.
It couldn’t be easier to subscribe. Simply send me your name and your email address to aldenkeene at gmail dot com.
When you subscribe each new post comes directly to your email, usually every business day.
And when you subscribe you'll get a PDF copy of "Five Flavors of Cause Marketing," a matrix which explains the elements of Cause Marketing and includes specific examples.
It's a great brainstorming tool that helps ensure your cause marketing campaigns have all the appropriate components.
Did I mention that all this cause marketing goodness is free?
And not just free, but free from obligation and worry. Because, rest assured, I will never sell your name or contact information. No matter what.
How should an agency evaluate a cause marketing campaign it had a hand in creating?
Agencies have their own unique gloss on evaluating the success of a campaign.
Agencies care about achieving higher creative standards.
Agencies frequently care about things like whether a campaign helps them add another trophy to the case or brings the respect of peers and the trade press.
And it goes without saying that agencies care about whether the work they do for the campaign meets internal benchmarks for profitability.
But in my view what should matter most for agencies is the degree to which the creative they produced is aligned with the nonprofit’s goals and objectives. Agencies must evaluate the success of a cause marketing campaign based on whether it achieved the nonprofit’s… and the sponsor’s… definitions of success.
Sometimes this means setting aside biases (both personal and institutional).
In cause marketing campaigns, the job of the agency isn’t to be clever for the sake of being clever. The agency's job is to help create a campaign that works; that is, a campaign that sells.
Last year Dan Pallotta, himself now an agency man after founding and running several anti-AIDS causes, made an interesting point in the Harvard Business Review blogs. Businesses sometimes scorn nonprofits as being inherently not self-sustainable, he writes.
But, “if reliance on the wealth of others makes a business not self-sustaining, then no business is self-sustaining. The music industry, for example, is not self-sustaining, because it relies on the wealth of consumers, who use their money to buy albums,” says Pallotta.
What can help make nonprofits self-sustainable? Here's how Pallotta answers:
“Most people want to help others. Their lives would feel incomplete without this connection to humanity. We can tap into this human desire by marketing compassion with the same rigor as we market luxury cars.”
That’s the ultimate assessment for an agency. Did they bring value that made the campaign more effective? Or did they bring creative that won cheers from their peers and yawns from the nonprofit's stakeholders?
Yesterday’s post ‘Five Questions Nonprofit Marketers Need Answers to From Potential Sponsors’ was inspired by a monthly column in Smart Money. Each month the personal finance magazine publishes a feature called “10 Things X Won’t Tell You.” The intent of the feature is to show that your interests and those of your bank, say, don’t always align.
In the interest of better alignment between causes and sponsors, here are five questions that a potential sponsor better have a satisfying answer to before engaging in a cause marketing relationship with a charity.
Am I Just a Paycheck to You? I had a conversation the other day with a potential cause marketing sponsor scouting for a cause. Their first goal was to generate money for their putative partner. Of course, they also had several business and marketing goals as well. Sophisticated sponsors know that most causes expect money from cause marketing. Fair enough. But if that represents most of a cause’s motivation a sponsor ought to know that.
Can We Work a Deal Where I Get a Look at Your Supporter’s List? As I’ve written in the past, while the U.S. has more than 1.5 million 501(c)(3) nonprofits, only a tiny fraction have a really good list. But for those that do, if the sponsor could come up with the right product and promotion mix, it could be a win-win for the cause and the sponsor.
Can We Date Before We Marry? Eric Ries, guru and author of the best-seller the ‘Lean Startup’ makes a mint telling new and established companies alike to figure out cheaper ways to test the market potential of products and services. He told Quicken, for instance, to put together a kind ‘sell sheet’ of a potential product with its features and benefits and see how the market reacted, rather than to build the software and hope people bought it. The Internet enables a low-risk approach like this for would-be cause marketing partners, too.
Where Will I Fit in Your Sponsor Pecking Order? The biggest, most prominent cause marketing charities have long sponsor lists. And the companies at the top of the list get more perks and bennies than the ones at the bottom of the list. This can be motivating. Or dispiriting. Sponsors need to get comfortable with where they’re likely to fit.
I Know You Have Your Favorite Cause Marketing Methods. Will You Cook Up Something Special Just for Me? Savvy causes have certain schemas, or blueprints that they tend to follow depending on the sponsor. Any retailer that gets good foot traffic, for instance, is a possibility for a paper icon effort. But a wholesale distributor or a tire warehouse or a flower grower is a different can of beans. And so you’ll want to know if the cause is capable of coming up with something from outside their usual bag of tricks.
Smart Money magazine does a monthly feature called “10 Things X Won’t Tell You.” In May 2011 it was ‘10 Things Fund-Raisers Won’t Tell You.’ The point of the feature is that people and organizations have their own self interest that might not always coincide with yours.
For instance, in this article number three was “It’s scary what we know about you.”
It’s a great premise, but I won’t be as cynical. Instead, here’s five things that causes ought to ask of and about potential sponsors before they ink a deal.
Do You Really Care About My Cause Or Is This Just a Business Deal? Causes naturally would prefer a sponsor’s money and heart, but they’re sophisticated enough to know that it might not always play out that way. So it’s better to know where the sponsor stands at the outset.
What Do You Do That Could Embarrass Me? If you pollute the headwaters of the Yangtze or employ child labor, or bribe high government officials, as a cause I want to know that beforehand. It may mean that I’ll call the deal off. But at the very least I’ll listen to your side of it before deciding.
What’s the Best Way to Interact With You? How do you want to hear from me and my cause? Phone? Email? Text? Twitter? Pigeon? This seems like a trifle among weightier questions, but this relationship ought to be based on trust and an open exchange of information. The cause has to know how best to do that right from the start.
What Are Your Metrics for Success From Our Partnership? What Are Your Boss’s? As a cause I want you my partner to look good. So I want to know how we can meet your expectations and the expectations of the people you report to.
Where Do You See This Going? Is this a date? Are we living together waiting for something better? Is this a starter marriage? A golden anniversary in the making? Any of these answers are OK, so long as the cause feels much the same way
Tomorrow’s post: “Five Questions Sponsors Need Answers to From Potential Nonprofit Partners.”
The first weekend after Memorial Day is the annual Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals Telethon. Like Go Red for Women from the American Heart Association or Thanks + Giving from St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, the Telethon serves as rallying point; a kind of concourse for sponsors, supporters and beneficiaries alike assemble and to wrap their cause marketing around.
At left is a simple Telethon sponsorship activation from Ameriprise that appeared in the May 2012 edition of Costco Connection magazine. Costco is one of Children’s Miracle Network Hospital’s largest sponsors.
These rallying points are a common feature of the very largest, most prominent cause marketers; Breast Cancer Awareness Month, American Heart Month, Hunger Action Month, the various walks and runs and races from the likes of the March of Dimes, the Multiple Sclerosis Society, American Diabetes Association, Susan G. Komen and others, and the aforementioned Thanks + Giving and CNMH Telethon.
You can understand why.
Rallying points come with deadlines. When February’s over, so too is American Heart Month. Miss that deadline and miss the chance to be part of the effort until the following year.
They give shape to cause marketing promotions. Breast Cancer Awareness Month enables the pink ribbon to be seen basically anywhere. On an NFL player’s glove, for instance.
They give the media… social media included… a story to tell. These rallying points can gain so much momentum that they reach a kind of tipping point, after which the media seeks stories from and about the event.
They become ‘teach-ins’ to use the increasingly antique phrase. That is, they give you the chance to tell every conceivable channel why your cause matters. Every March of Dimes walk is a chance to talk about birth defects, about the damage that’s done, how to prevent birth defects and the good news about what’s working.
They give sponsors something to rally to. Back in the old days of the Children’s Miracle Network Telethon, we brought in all our sponsors to do live appearances on the show. With so many of them there, we’d host meetings, hospital tours, golf tournaments and the like. It turned out to be a chance for corporate America to network both on behalf of CMN and also themselves.
They give supporters a culminating event to anticipate, work towards and celebrate. Even if the fundraising and/or volunteering starts again the week after your rallying event, having a culminating events helps you measure your effort against the prior year, celebrate the successes and learn from the failures.
The other day I bought a paper icon at national chain store. The icon has a bar code and the clerk scanned it and handed me a receipt when the transaction was finished. At the bottom of the receipt was an 800-number keyed to a customer satisfaction survey. Dial the number, or call up the website on my mobile device, answer some questions and I’m entered into a drawing for $10,000.
As I left I thought, ‘they know I just bought a paper icon. Instead of offering me the chance to win $10,000, why not offer to donate $2 (or more!) to the cause in question whenever someone completes their customer satisfaction survey?’
Why haven’t I ever seen this kind of cause marketing?
Cause marketing is all about encouraging certain behaviors in exchange for helping a cause. Framed that way customer satisfaction surveys are a natural fit for cause marketing.
My purchase of the paper icon clearly demonstrates that I have some affinity for the cause in question. I’m not a code monkey, but I doubt that it’s a big sweaty ordeal to change the pitch at the bottom of the receipt when I've purchased an icon.
The $10,000 amount suggests that the response rate is pretty low. By contrast, the survey at Taco Bell gives responders a shot at a $1,000 weekly giveaway. Complete the survey from a regional seafood restaurant and you get a free dessert. Home Depot’s survey drawing amount is a $5,000 Home Depot gift card.
Time is of the essence with these surveys. But so what? There are some 331 million wireless subscribers in the United States, according to the Cellular Telecommunications International Association (and only 313 million Americans!). So retailers might want to offer some sort of sliding scale whereby the sooner you call, the higher the donation amount, e.g.:
Answer the survey within 1 hour and the donation is $5.
Answer the survey within 12 hours and the donation is $3.
Answer the survey within 24 hours and the donation is $2.
Answer the survey within 30 days of the transaction and the donation is $1.
The biggest challenge might be explaining it lucidly in, oh, say, 30 words or less.
Most of these surveys can also be completed online, too. The retailer could certainly run the survey through Facebook. Online customer satisfaction surveys represent another chance to do some cause marketing and, perhaps, some marketing for the cause.
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