Five Bad Habits of Cause Marketers

On Monday I posted about five good habits of great cause marketers. But cause marketers... good and bad... can have bad habits too.

In his terrific 2012 book The Power of Habit Pulitzer prize-winning-reporter Charles Duhigg tells about the three phases of habits: the cue; the routine or behavior; and the reward.

To change bad habits to good habits, Duhigg writes, you have to transform the routine / behavior. That’s how Alcoholic Anonymous works and the means by which Tony Dungy turned the Indianapolis Colts into Super Bowl champs, to cite two examples from the Duhigg’s book. I recommend The Power of Habit highly.

Here, then, are five bad habits that too many cause marketers have.

1. Analyzing the Data Badly. Immature people, like immature cause marketers, almost always struggle with what scientists call ‘confirmation bias.’ That is, they tend to want to shape the data to their conclusions and prejudices, rather than the other way around. Confirmation bias leads to bad science and bad cause marketing.  
2. They Don’t Ship. “Real artists ship,” Steve Jobs is supposed to have said. Seth Godin keeps writing blog posts and books on the topic. By ‘shipping’ Jobs and Godin mean that you gotta get the product or the service out the door. Quit dithering. Don’t wait for perfection. Get it done and ship it.
3. They Go Too Deep Into Shallow Things. We’re talking about cause marketing here, which many people consider to be inherently shallow. But what I’m talking about caring too much about very shallow things in a cause marketing campaign. For instance, whether the event t-shirt has ribbed band around the sleeves or what color the Town Car is that picks up the celebrity. Details count in cause marketing, but it’s a bad habit to think that all details have equal weight.
4. They Don’t Stay With a Campaign Long Enough. The human mind is a curious organ. It craves novelty, but it learns by repetition. Too many cause marketers give too much heed to the first factor and not enough to the second.
5. They Work On Everything But Themselves. Covey was right. You gotta sharpen the saw. If you don’t frequently and consistently renew the physical, intellectual, mental, spiritual, emotional parts of yourself, you’re going to bring less to your cause marketing. Like the flight attendants say at the start of the flight, take care of yourself first before you help someone else.

The Five Habits of Great Cause Marketers

Aristotle wrote, “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.” Of course, that’s true. There are a whole host of things that are challenging the first times we do them, but become easier as we repeat them. Scientists call it “automaticity.” I’ve been driving for more than 25 years and notwithstanding all the cognitive effort it took when I was 16, it’s pretty easy for me to drive safely now.

William James, the first real American psychologist, said that habits are like the crease in a man’s suit pants or the channels set by the water that came before. “Could the young but realize how soon they will become mere walking bundles of habits, they would give more heed to their conduct while in the plastic state,” James said.

Benjamin Franklin, perhaps the greatest-ever American and a first-rate aphorist said on the topic, “Your net worth to the world is usually determined by what remains after your bad habits are subtracted from your good ones.” Franklin really knew how to cut through the crap, didn’t he?

So what are five habits that you as a cause marketer should adopt?

• You should habitually stay abreast of cause marketing trends and changes.
• You should habitually talk to your sponsors, at least once a week.
• You should habitually think about ways to improve your cause marketing campaigns.
• You should habitually spend time in the company of your constituents gauging what’s meaningful to them about your cause, your sponsors, and your cause marketing.
• You should habitually make all your cause marketing appeals open, transparent, and easy to understand.

But habits are the classic two-edged sword. Bad habits can be as destructive as good habits are constructive. On Wednesday we’ll talk about five cause habits you should break, and how to go about it. 

Where is All the Cause Marketing with Faith-Based Nonprofits?

In Feb 2013, I got an email from a remarkable student at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill who had an intriguing question: why isn’t there more cause marketing between sponsors and faith-based nonprofits?
 
It’s a question I’d wondered about myself so it was fun to be asked to think about. Marshele Carter Waddell and I talked about it several times in the intervening months. Marshele is a grad student in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at UNC, the executive director of a faith-based nonprofit, the author of four books, the 28-Year Wife of a U.S. Navy SEAL Commander (ret) and mother of a U.S. Marine Infantry Officer who received the “Bronze Star for Valor for things sons don't tell their mothers,” as she puts it.
 
With her permission I publish the conclusion of her analysis which is one section in a report of a larger project called, "Corporations, Creeds and Cause-related Marketing Campaigns: Defining the Graces that Save and the Sins that Sink Corporate Social Responsibility Endeavors with Faith-based, Nonprofit Organizations."

Based on the six interviews, it appears that, shoulder to shoulder, faith-based nonprofit organizations and faith-neutral nonprofit organizations do not enjoy the same windows of opportunities for cause-related marketing endeavors. Two nonprofit leaders, an author, two marketing and development agency directors and a for-profit vice president agreed that, in general, faith-based nonprofit organizations are at a disadvantage from the starting blocks to the finish line in pursuing cause-related marketing partnerships. 

However there are considerations and steps that faith-based nonprofit organizations can take as they seek to more effectively compete for cause-related marketing partnerships. The following suggestions and advice emerged in the interviews:

• A thorough understanding of both the nonprofit organization’s target markets and the potential partner for-profit organization’s target markets is essential in selecting potential partners to approach. This step also simplifies the inherent self-selection nature of cause-related marketing partnerships.
• Faith-based nonprofit organizations should invest energies to create programs that meet the for-profit world halfway, i.e. generating deliverable outputs and programs that have value to society in general, while staying true to the faith-based nonprofit organization’s core values and mission statement.
• Faith-based nonprofit organizations should focus on creating a business model that provides qualitative metrics, collecting meaningful data, verifying that data by triangulating with alternative research methods, such as focus groups and follow-up evaluations, and being able to report on the difference the program or campaign is making in constituents’ lives in measurable terms.
• Interactive Evaluation Systems, such as one provided by the Department of Defense for recipients of its grants, as well as financial accountability accreditation agencies like the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability, Guidestar, and Charity Navigator, provide a third-party source for credibility for faith-based nonprofit organizations.
• Faith-based nonprofit organizations that learn to speak the language of the for-profit arena make strides in forming positive relationships with companies. The ability to interact confidently when discussing basic business concepts, such as marketing intelligence, return on investment and metrics, is essential. 
• Attention should also be given to eliminating charged vocabulary, such as using “program” instead of “ministry” and “faith-neutral” instead of “secular.”
• Faith-based nonprofit organizations can consider restructuring their business models and organizational message to become what interviewees called “covert” without compromising mission, objectives and motives.
• Faith-based organizations can explore an alternative angle for approaching potential for-profit groups by inviting a balanced selection of other faith-based nonprofit organizations to collaborate in the creation and implementation of the cause-related marketing campaign. 
• Faith-based nonprofit organizations can improve their websites to include a “Cause Marketing” tab for corporate visitors that defines cause-related marketing, suggests businesses ideas for partnership and presents the benefits of alignment.
• Tenacity and endurance are critical organizational characteristics for faith-based nonprofits that compete for cause-marketing relationships with nonprofits. Weathering the ebb and flow of political and social climates will enable faith-based nonprofit organizations to endure and outlast cultural evolutions.

Both of the marketing agency directors who were interviewed provided insights into which faith-based nonprofit organizations should consider including cause-related marketing campaigns in their overall marketing strategy. The investment of staff, budget and other resources into pursuing cause-related partnerships is worthwhile if the faith-based nonprofit organization has a strong cause that both supersedes religion and also intersects with widely held religious/spiritual values. Headline issues and programs that address a national, cross-generational, cross-cultural, widespread problem warrant cause-related marketing consideration. Examples of such causes include caring for returning veterans and their families, ending homelessness, eliminating sex trafficking and encouraging responsible fatherhood.  

The gap in scholarly literature and the disconnect in the national dialogue on the subject of faith-based nonprofit organizations in cause-related marketing partnerships, both confirmed in this research, present an opportunity not only for further research but for educating both camps, the for-profit and nonprofit realms, about the opportunities and challenges of such partnerships. Corporations have room for improvement in creating, communicating and making available their marketing partnership criteria, specifically in regards to their willingness to support and to partner with faith-based nonprofit organizations. Faith-based organizations must refine their efforts by

• Clarifying their business mission statement,
• Crystallizing their cause,
• Communicating that message to companies in a clear, concise and compelling manner, and
• Providing measurable outputs that create a win-win partnership.

This shift will inevitably require progressive, visionary leadership on the part of the faith-based nonprofit organizations and the willingness of corporations to recognize the fiscal value of relationship with those of the faith community.

The Moral Authority of the IRS Has Been Diminished

Years ago I read a book by a man who had been the public defender in the bad old days of Soviet Russia. There were horrors aplenty, all worthy of a Kafka novel. One of the things that has stuck with me ever since was his belief that he wasn’t defending his clients against just the Soviet apparatchik. He also had to defend against the expectations of jurors who ‘knew’ what the government wanted; even when there was no communication from any level of the Nomenklatura.

Such kangaroo courts didn’t require any direct intervention from Soviet officials at all, he wrote. That is during a trial jurors didn’t need to get something like a telegram from the Politiburo to know how to rule. They convicted defendants based on what they thought the Politburo and the Party would want them to do.

These memories came back to me over the weekend when I learned that Internal Revenue Service (IRS) officials in the Cincinnati offices in charge on non-profit were giving unwarranted scrutiny to applications of conservative and pro-Israel causes applying for 501(c)(4) status. In the United States causes have to jump through a handful of hoops to get non-profit status from the IRS. They have to incorporate in a U.S. State. They have to get a federal tax I.D. number. To offer tax deductable donations nonprofits have get a letter of determination from the IRS which involves an application process.

On Friday, May 10, Lois Lerner, head of the IRS division that oversees tax-exempt groups admitted to attorneys at a tax conference organized by American Bar Association that “low-level” functionaries at the IRS had flagged 501(c)(4) applications that had words like “patriot,” “Tea Party,” or had missions that sought to educate the citizenry on the Constitution, or had statements criticizing “how the country is being run.” Groups with “progressive” in their name or mission got no such scrutiny.

In some cases the IRS harried applicants by requiring them to submit donor lists and made document requests about the activities of the family members of board members and officers, and even demanded the reading lists of board members. All of which is very irregular and smacks of harassment.

The IRS issued its apologies and mea culpas in advance of a report on the matter due out this week from the Treasury Department’s inspector general. The acting IRS Commissioner Steven Miller writes that while “mistakes were made” there was no political motivation. 

Be that as it may, Miller knew about the targeting in May 2012 and twice denied himself the opportunity to report it to Congress when directly asked about IRS oversight of 501(c)(4) groups. Lois Lerner knew about it in July 2011 and didn’t report it to Congress when she was asked.

The Washington Post and a chorus of others have called for a thorough Congressional investigation of the malfeasance. Attorney General Eric Holder has launched his own investigation. Bully to all of them.

White House spokesman Jay Carney was quick to remind reporters that the IRS Commissioner during the time the singling out took place was Bush appointee Doug Shulman.

I doubt any investigation will tie the White House to any of this. But Presidents Franklin Roosevelt and Richard Nixon both employed the IRS against political enemies. I doubt that’s the case here. But bear in mind that such behavior was not only wrong, but criminal.

Instead I think it’s something more invidious. It’s possible that these “low level” IRS employees tagged conservative causes for unjust scrutiny because they thought it would please the Obama administration.

No matter your politics, this is wrong. Of necessity, the IRS must be non-partisan in its enforcement of America’s tax laws. To do otherwise, the Washington Post editorializes, “threatens the trust and the voluntary cooperation of citizens upon which this democracy depends.”

In singling out certain groups, IRS employees put their thumbs on the scales of justice. Fairness and uprightness were defenestrated. President Obama got it right. The actions of the IRS were “outrageous.” Trust has been lost. The moral authority of the IRS has been diminished. The cause of good governance has taken a bruising body blow.

If, as I suspect, this was just functionaries trying to please the Obama administration then people need to lose their jobs.

If the acts were directed from above, then criminal law was broken and people need to go to jail.

Father's Day Ad Can't Save the Manatee

One of the oldest tricks in the retail promotions handbook is to base your promotion around a holiday. That’s why you see chocolate promotions in around Valentine’s Day in February, and back to school sales in August, when most schools in the United States restart after the summer break. Merchants and retailers use holidays as a hook to hang their promotions on.

It goes without saying that there’s nothing coded in the world’s DNA that compels back-to-school sales to take place in August, however. In counties where the summer school break is shorter back-to-school sales might take place in July.

So if Memorial Day (the last Monday in May) or even Labor Day (the first Monday in September) sound like the perfect time to grill up some steaks on the BBQ, it’s because for more than 30 years that’s what grocers have been telling us.

The point being, effective marketers are able draw connections that didn’t exist before between holidays and sales promotions.

Now a cause is trying to draw a connection between Father’s Day and support of Manatees. In the States Father’s Day is celebrated on the third Sunday in June. Manatees are large herbivorous marine mammals that inhabit three smallish ranges, the Caribbean / Gulf of Mexico, the upper Amazon River basin, and West Africa. In the United States, manatees, or sea cows, are limited to the Florida peninsula.

Manatees are big and slow moving. And because they frequent shallow waters, manatees have a lot of run-ins with motorboats. Moreover, they’re a fragile species. Their slow metabolism means that even though they’re mammals, they don’t tolerate cold water very well. They breed only every other year and gestation is 12 months long and yields one calf. It takes another year or 18 months to wean their calves. But just because they’re big and slow don’t mistake them for dumb. Wikipedia says manatees “demonstrate complex discrimination and task-learning similar to dolphins and pinnipeds (seals and sea lions) in acoustic and visual studies.”

In the ad, which I found in the June 2013 issue of Redbook magazine, the call to action goes like this: “For Dad, a Real Stand-Up Guy, Adopt-a-Manatee this Father’s Day.” The cause is the Save the Manatee Club, a 501(c)(3) charity founded by Jimmy Buffet and Florida politician Bob Graham in 1981, and headquartered in Maitland, Florida.

Cue the Margaritaville record scratch sound effect.

What? Adopt-a-Manatee this Father’s Day?

Sure, I buy that promotions don’t have to have demonstrate infallible logic. After Mother’s Day, the second busiest season for flower sales is Christmas, surprisingly enough. And I’m willing to concede the idea that really good and persistent advertising can help us see connections that weren’t already there. The reason why diamonds are associated with love is because DeBeers has been telling us that “A Diamond is Forever” since 1947.

But if Save the Manatee, really wants to hang its hook on Father’s Day, it’s going to have to work a little harder on making that case.

A Few Extra Steps in Your Cause Marketing Could Bring About a Blockbuster

Cause marketing, like all forms of sponsorship, requires activation, or promotion of the campaign in some form. Imagine, then, how sweet it is when you sign one or more members of the media as a campaign sponsor. It’s a little like coming home every night to Giselle Bundchen (or, if you prefer, Tom Brady).

Too bad the media sponsor in an effort benefiting the Red Dress campaign didn’t take a few extra steps to ensure that the campaign had a second life.

The Red Dress Awards have been sponsored for the last 10 years by Woman’s Day magazine, the Hachette Filipacci title with a circulation of almost 4 million readers. The Red Dress campaign is a sprawling effort held each February to raise awareness of heart disease among woman. Heart disease is far and away the deadliest killer of women in the United States.

Red Dress efforts are spearheaded jointly, but separately by the National Institutes of Health and the American Heart Association. In 2010 the Red Dress Awards benefited the Larry King Cardiac Foundation. In 2011, the beneficiary was the American Heart Association.

The Woman’s Day ad  which I found in the Alden Keene Cause Marketing Database gives you all the highlights. The host was Sherri Shepherd of the TV show The View. Mary J. Blige performed. Celebrity stylemaker Tim Gunn sanctioned the event. Dancers from the hit TV show Dancing With the Stars performed a spicy cha-cha. Other sponsors like Campbell’s and Swarovski were recognized. Honorees were awarded.

It was a fancy New York City gala, in other words.

If your heart disease charity was the beneficiary, you’d feel pretty good about what you got from Woman’s Day Red Dress Awards. But if Woman’s Day were willing, the show could be better still and generate even more money.

• Imagine, for example, if instead of a standard gala fare the show was packaged so that it could air, with commercials, on television. I suspect Oprah’s OWN network is looking for a lot of good programming.
• Or think about clearing the rights to the songs that Mary J. Blige sang at the show and selling them as a benefit on iTunes.
• What if you conducted a pre-auction for the right to be coached by and perform with the Dancing With the Stars dancers that night?
• What if Tim Gunn designed a limited-edition broach or ring or bracelet or outfit with red Swarovski crystals, that was unveiled at the show and then sold in a limited quantity online? People love limited-edition stuff because it lends an air of exclusivity.
• What if Campbell’s offered a sweepstakes on package of select soups for a chance to attend next year’s show at a celebrity-studded table if you raised more than $5,000 for the American Heart Association?

If you did those things, or better ones, the Woman’s Day Red Dress Awards would have a second life, more money would be raised, and Woman’s Day would win awards at the 2014 Cause Marketing Forum.

Cause Marketers, Let's Really Start Hearing One Another

I’ve been writing this blog for almost seven years and have been involved with cause marketing for more than 20 years. During that time one of my enduring complaints has been that marketers from the causes and from the sponsors were talking to each other, but not really listening. It was like a modestly-happy couple communicating everything, except trust. But now there are increasing signs that they’re finally hearing and trusting each other.

Witness a label effort from 2011 that I found in the Alden Keene Cause Marketing Database called Child Hunger Ends Here from ConAgra Foods on behalf of Feeding America. ConAgra owns more than a half dozen food brands including three that target children; Chef Boyardee, Peter Pan peanut butter, and the Kid Cuisine brand of quick-serve meals.

When you entered the 8-digit code from the package of any participating ConAgra item at www.childhungerendsheare.com and a donation is made to Feeding America, up to 2.5 million meals. That probably represented a cash donation of something like $360,000, since Feeding America says it gets seven meals out of each dollar.

After you entered the code, you were ushered to a page that offered up printable coupons for ConAgra items and asked for your email address.

But pay special attention to the three things that opting-in brought:

1. "Yes, I would like to receive future emails about the Child Hunger Ends Here program."
2. "Yes, I would like to receive emails from Feeding America."
3. "Yes, I would like to receive emails about ConAgra Foods brands."

Imagine that. If you opted in to the ConAgra promotion, Feeding America got your email address!

For a very long time I’ve been telling cause marketers, my clients, and you, my faithful readers, to share this kind of data and more…to give onetime cause marketing promotions second life as a database. I won’t claim that ConAgra or Feeding America 'got' my message. Feeding America and ConAgra are very sophisticated organizations, after all.

But I am glad that to be able to point others to forward-thinking cause marketing partners who are really hearing one another.

Making the Language of Your Cause Marketing Appeal Clear and Concrete

An ad in the May 2010 issue of the 'Yoga Journal' offered an unspecified donation to a yoga charity when you bought a pair of yoga pants from Lucy.com. The donation went to Off the Mat, Into the World, a nonprofit co-founded by the model in the ad, Seane Corn. The ad now resides in the Alden Keene Cause Marketing Database.

‘Off the Mat’ is a fun name, suggesting that there’s other things in life that reward the participant in addition to yoga. So what does Off the Mat do? The ad says OTM’s mission is “inspiring conscious, sustainable community service through the power of yoga.”

I know what community service is and I understand the words conscious and sustainable in a broad way. But when they’re all combined in that sentence it seems like nonsense. It’s hard to imagine 'unconscious community service,' for instance. In this sentence it’s as though plain English got tied up like a pretzel.

I suspect that for many of the readers of Yoga Journal words like conscious and sustainable used in this way represent a cant or argot. That is, a phraseology or idiom particular to their world.

It’s probably fair to say that few non-yoga practitioners, like myself, pick up the Yoga Journal and consequently don't know the subtexts of the culture. However, just because you have your own idiom and media that caters to you is no reason to make your ads vague and unclear.

Brothers Chip and Dan Heath explain why in their fine book 'Made to Stick.' Concrete language, grounded in sensory reality, is more memorable than any argot. “It’s the difference between reading about a wine (‘bold but balanced’)” the Heaths wrote in an article about their book, “and tasting it… We talk about the ‘Velcro Theory of Memory.’ In brief, this concept says that the more sensory ‘hooks’ we put into an idea, the better it will stick.”

Just as screws hold better than nails, clarity and concreteness give our memories more to hold on to than does subtext and idiom.

Cause marketing trades on clarity and concreteness. So the vague language about portion of the proceeds is not only unclear, it's unhelpful to the appeal.

Time to Smarten Up Our Earth Day Messaging

Today, Monday, April 22 is the 43rd Earth Day in the United States, a day that was originally conceived as a kind of environmental ‘teach-in.’

But I think it’s fair to say that most Americans understood those first few Earth Days not as a ‘teach-in’ but as a reminder to clean up litter.

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

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

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

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

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

My problem with Earth Day as it’s presently constituted is that there’s too many emphases for people to keep in their heads. Earth Day is markedly more sophisticated in 2013 than it was in 1970. Trouble is, we've still got the same ol’ human brains we've always had.

The Earth Day Network website lists 10 campaigns of emphasis: Vote for the Environment, Recycle Your E-Waste, Earth Day India, A Billion Acts of Green – Renewable Energy for All, Government Officials, Save Yasuni National Park, Earth Day 2012 - the 42nd Anniversary, School Greenings Across the USA, Building the Climate Movement, Earth Day 2011: A Billion Acts of Green. Plus, End Fossil Fuel Subsidies, Tell President Obama to Attend Rio +20, Campaign for Communities, MobilizeU, Reading for the Earth, and Know Green.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 43 years ago. And it can get better still. But you gotta message it smarter.

And smarter messaging means fewer concurrent goals.

Cool Cause Marketing Effort, Wrong Season

Project Potential from Kraft's ready-to-eat meal brand Lunchables sounds like a wondrous effort. In an ad that ran in the May 2010 Glamour magazine and is now archived in the Alden Keene Cause Marketing Database, a cute little girl is said to be leaping from princesshood to… maybe… the presidency thanks to Project Potential.

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

I suppose that a class fieldtrip could help someone fulfill their potential. Peter Parker got bit by a radioactive spider on a class fieldtrip and became Spiderman after all!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In short, Kraft had the germ of a fine idea. They just conducted it in the wrong season.

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

The Marriage of Cause Marketing and Weddings

It’s wedding season and what with Prince William and Catherine Middleton celebrating their second anniversary this month (and the coming birth of their first child) it’s time to think again about the marriage of weddings with cause marketing.

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

But maybe you don’t want to do that at your wedding.

You might, however, consider using the occasion of your wedding to do what the Royal Couple did and give to a number of causes. Here’s how the official Royal Wedding website puts it at the time:

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

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

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

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

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

Tips on Making Your Cause Marketing Collateral More Persuasive

The Alden Keene Cause Marketing Database turned up a handbill from a Wendy’s in Arizona for AASK-Arizona, an affiliate for the Wendy’s adoption program called Wendy’s Wonderful Kids in metropolitan Phoenix.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The fourth paragraph is no more persuasive.

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

My bet is that AASK has competitors who would also claim to have dedicated staffs and a commitment to placing more children. So unique isn’t the right word. But AASK has been in business since 1988, which is no small feat. Charities that can’t fulfill their missions or make their cases to supporters don’t usually last 25 years.

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

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

Employee Engagement as a Goal of Cause Marketing

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Reasons to End a Cause Marketing Relationship

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

When Sponsors Don't Renew Cool Cause Marketing Campaigns

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

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

I missed this campaign from Campbell’s in 2009 and 2010 benefiting the FFA. But I came across it while working on the Alden Keene Cause Marketing Database. And though Campbell’s hasn’t renewed the campaign, it’s one of my favorite cause marketing efforts of all time.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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