Cause Marketing

This paper icon… which I purchased for $1 at Bashas’, an Arizona grocery chain… made it very clear to me that charities doing paper icon cause marketing campaigns are going to need to differentiate or risk being commoditized out of existence by the retailers themselves. The full-color icon benefits a new orangutan enclosure at the Phoenix Zoo. The icon is 5½” x 8½” and was sitting on the checkout counter. I couldn’t see any hanging in the store in Mesa, Arizona where I bought it or any other kind of collateral material explaining the campaign. Nor did the clerk try to “sell” me the icon or amplify any aspect of the campaign. The back of the paper icon was blank. But I was impressed that the icon featured the beneficiary, a cute little orangutan. Too many charities are still selling sneakers and balloons and shamrocks even though their beneficiaries are adorable little human children. Bashas’, which has done paper icon campaigns for other charities, seems to have learned some lessons in...

Done Right, They're A License to Print Donations Here in North America it’s common to use ‘paper icons’ as a major part of your cause-related marketing, particularly in campaigns with retailers. And why not? When I left Children's Miracle Network in 1998 they were generating more than $25 million a year from their paper icon campaign. (I’ve long disliked the expression ‘paper icon,’ so someone please suggest a better name.) What are paper icons? They’re slips of paper emblematic of a cause typically placed next to a cash register and sold as impulse items. They’re relatively cheap to produce, even in small print runs. In large runs they might be less than a penny a piece. In North America the typical sales price is $1, although larger dollar amounts have been tried. After the icon is purchased, it’s common to write the name of the purchaser on the icon. During the promotional period the icons are displayed in the window, along a wall, strung above the cash registers, etc Some b...

Smith’s Food and Drug is in the middle of its annual campaign for Primary Children’s Medical Center , a key part of which is this paper icon. I purchased mine for $1 on Saturday, May 7, 2011. Since 1992 Smith’s, a 130-store unit of the grocery giant Kroger , has donated more than $7.6 million to Primary, one of only a handful of Trauma One pediatric hospitals in the country, and the only such hospital in its service area, which includes parts of Utah, Idaho, Nevada, Wyoming, and Montana. Smith’s donation to Primary in 2010 was $1 million and $837,000 in 2009 , signaling the regard with which Primary is held in the local community as well as Smith’s skill at fundraising, even in the face of an economic downturn. The paper icon is large, more than 6½” in diameter, and in full color. The back is blank except for a black and white UPC code. The clerk dutifully asked me if I wanted to buy the icon. The credit card machine had a coordinated paper surround that also promoted the campaign. ...

Yesterday, December 22, 2010, I bought this paper icon at a local chain of 31 stores called Fresh Market , which is owned by a large grocery co-op headquartered in Utah, called Associated Foods . Sales of the icon benefits the hungry, women's shelters, military families, and community centers... based on what the individual store decides . Paper icon campaigns and their new-age descendents have been with us for two decades now and it seems that everybody thinks they know how to do them. I see a lot of these kinds of campaigns (and buy every new one I see). The Alden Keene Cause Marketing Database now has dozens of examples. My analysis of the paper icons in the Alden Keene Cause Marketing Database is that only those who have been doing paper icon campaigns for a long time are any good. In the spirit of improving this campaign, which I think shows promise, here’s what I suggest: Scratch the other charity options and just go with food banks. Fresh Market is a store. It feeds people. ...

A lot of retail establishments do paper icon campaigns, but relatively few seem to have embraced the bounceback offer. That’s why I was glad to see the bounceback coupon at the left from Denny’s. Right now Denny’s, a chain with more than 1,500 restaurants across the United States, is selling and displaying paper icons benefiting Toys for Tots, the toy giveaway charity. When you buy the paper icon at the left, Denny’s gives you the bounceback coupon below for an order of Pancake Puppies, which are sort of like doughnut holes. Pancake Puppies, which usually sell for $2, almost cry out for a cup of coffee or hot chocolate to accompany them, so Denny’s is betting that when I redeem the coupon that I’ll buy at least that and, more likely, think of the Pancake Puppies as a kind of appetizer for a larger meal. For that reason, almost every retailer that sells paper icons should probably try and figure out some kind of bounceback offer appropriate to their business. Back in the day at Children...

Right now at Mimi’s restaurants, when you buy a ‘Miracle Balloon’ pin for $5 benefiting Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals, you get a paper icon to be displayed in the restaurant and three bounceback coupons worth as much as $30. I once wrote that Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals had forgotten more about cause marketing than almost any other charity knew about the practice. I meant that as a back-handed compliment. From my vantage-point it seemed to me that many of the things that CMNH had once known in its bones about what did and didn’t work in cause marketing seemed to be lost to CMNH’s institutional memory. But this promotion tells me that Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals has regained its footing. This is a very solid paper icon campaign.   Mimi’s Café is a casual dining restaurant chain with more than 100 stores in 22 states, with a heavy concentration of the total units in California. Mimi’s Café is a division of Bob Evans Farms. What’s to like about the camp...

We’ve all seen paper icons that sell for $1. A few sell for $5 and fewer still for $10. But how’s this for ambition from Whole Foods Market ? The top listed price for their paper icon is $180. Talk about ‘whole paycheck!’ Sorry that was a cheap (and irresistible) shot at Whole Foods which has turned out a very well-thought out and well-executed paper icon campaign. Probably the best one I’ve seen in the last five years. The campaign benefits the microcredit effort of Whole Foods’ Whole Planet Foundation . The Foundation partners with microfinace partners in 29 countries in the developing world, with an emphasis on regions that supply product to Whole Foods. By design most of the microenterprise loans go to women. The fit, therefore, is very clear. Microfinance when coupled with microenterprise, has a good success record at lifting people out of poverty worldwide even if it isn’t a panacea, and remains widely respected in America. The icon uses both sides, which I always recommend. In t...

On the heals of Joe Waters and Joanna MacDonald’s fine book Cause Marketing for Dummies …which dives deep into cause marketing at point of purchase… I came across this paper icon campaign from Whole Foods that benefits gardening in schools. Called the Garden Grant Program, the goal is to raise $2,000,000 so as to be able to offer 1,000 schools a $2,000 grant to either create or expand an existing school garden. The nonprofit partner is New York City-based FoodCorps , a subset of AmeriCorps so new the ink on the logo isn’t yet dry. FoodCorps is a service corps of young people…think early post-college age kids… who committed to a three-fold mission: “Deliver hands-on nutrition education" “Build and tend school gardens" “Bring high-quality local food into public school cafeterias" The first 50 fanned out across the USA early this month. You may have read Mark Bittman’s column on the rollout in the New York Times 23 August 2011. Bittman writes that the inaugural gr...

A friend recently found the paper icon at the left at a bowling alley in metropolitan Salt Lake City, Utah, where I live and asked my opinion. Where to start? There was, my friend said, no indication in the bowling alley of who the benefiting charity is, aside from the pink ribbon, which denotes the fight against breast cancer. Susan G. Komen for the Cure would almost certainly consider the phrase “Bowl for The Cure” a copyright and/or a trademark violation. If this were a Komen campaign it would carry their trademarked version of the pink ribbon. The icon would also be a darn-sight more sophisticated. There’s no identifying marks on the paper icon except the pink ribbon. There’s no explanation on the back of the paper icon; just acres of unused white space. Speaking of size it’s nearly 10-inches high and 4-inches wide at its widest point. It could easily be two-thirds its present size and be just as effective. The paper stock is pretty heavy, I’d say at least 80-pound. It doesn’t nee...

We turn again to the icon campaign only this time an all-electronic version. It’s the season of St. Patrick’s Day in the United States and the Muscular Dystrophy Association is selling their paper Shamrocks in stores and other retail locations. I saw them advertised as a top banner ad on the website of my local newspaper. I clicked on the ad and it took me to a secure page on the MDA website . It took forever to download, but in time a video appeared featuring a short performance from by singer Ace Young from their telethon. Young, a former American Idol finalist, then made a call to action to support the MDA by buying an electronic version of their Shamrock in $5 or $10 amounts, or more. Some of the traffic comes from Young’s Myspace page and he addresses those fans directly in the script. MDA also has a Myspace page and counts Young as a friend. Like all icon campaigns this is “ fortune at the bottom of the pyramid ” type fundraising, but for MDA an 'e-Shamrock' is vastl...

Pizza Hut is currently raising funds for the UN's World Food Program using the paper icon at the left, a mobile phone text fundraising effort, and celebrity support from songstress Christina Augilera. The campaign called From Hunger to Hope also invites direct support through the campaign website . From Hunger to Hope comes from Yum Brands , franchisor of Pizza Hut, KFC, Taco Bell, Long John Silver’s, and A&W, and the campaign crosses all of its restaurants. In 2009 the effort generated $22.5 million for the WFP and other hunger agencies, which translated into 90 million meals. Twenty-two million dollars is a laudable, even herculean effort. But consider that Yum operates 37,000 locations. Some locations will do more and some will do much less, but to raise $22.5 million each store needs to average $608. With so many locations, a modest improvement in per store fundraising translates to huge numbers in the collective total. For instance, if per store fundraising goes up to $...

The Utah Valley Chamber of Commerce is offering paper icons to member organizations to raise funds for the annual University of Utah vs. Brigham Young University (BYU) Food Drive, which culminates at the rivalry football game in Salt Lake City on Saturday, November 27. The money collected by BYU fans goes to the Community Action Services and Food Bank in Utah County. The suggested retail price for the icons, called ‘Y Marks,’ is $1. (At left is a flyer for the campaign. I haven't laid my hands on an actual 'Y Mark' yet). This is the first time I’ve seen a Chamber of Commerce sponsor a paper icon campaign, but it’s not hard to imagine why the Utah Valley Chamber choose to do it. Utah County, where BYU and the Utah Valley Chamber is located, is a natural hotbed of BYU football fans. It’s logical to assume that most of the small businesses in Utah County are either owned by or employ BYU fans. Retail businesses are frequently members of Chambers of Commerce, and paper icon cam...

Late last year Walgreens ran the paper icon campaign at the left benefiting its long-time partner the American Diabetes Association in English on one side and Spanish on the other. Walgreens is the giant drugstore/C-store chain with more than 8,000 locations coast-to-coast. Such efforts are old hat in Canada, which is officially bilingual. But I can’t remember seeing any other paper icon efforts Stateside that came in two or more languages. The potential payoff is efficiency: Walgreens/ADA only has to print one paper icon to reach two separate cultures. But I doubt it will pay off. For one, the shape, design and colors make the icon easy to miss, no matter your culture. It’s rather blah. Then there’s the interesting issue of which side to display at the register. In big chunks of the Southwest and Florida you’d probably want to display the icon Spanish side up, and English side up in most of the rest of the country. Except that even here in the Mountain States, where I live, there’s a ...

Yesterday in OfficeMax I saw a new kind of icon campaign, this one a continuation of their efforts to benefit classroom teachers in the United States. There were three suggested donation amounts: $1, $2 and $5. Unlike paper icons , it’s basically a tchotchke, similar to the Staples talking Easy Button, which benefited Boys and Girls Clubs of America. But the OfficeMax ‘refrigerator magnet’ is more utilitarian than cute; there’s a magnet on the back and you could use it hold photos, notes, bills, etc. As I noted before, Staples Easy Button was notably light on information about the benefiting charity. The cause marketing element seemed like a last hour add-on. But with the OfficeMax refrigerator magnet, the cause is its raison d’être . We get four swift sentences on the back of the card that explains what the cause is and why we should care. I spotted the OfficeMax refrigerator magnet in its own well-labeled POP box on the checkout counter. The clerk did not ask me if I wanted to buy ...

The other day I bought a paper icon at a chain drugstore. The icon has a bar code and the clerk scanned it and handed me a receipt as we finished the transaction. At the bottom of the receipt was an 800-number keyed to a customer satisfaction survey. Dial the number, answer some questions and I’m entered into a drawing for $10,000. I don’t know what their response rate is, but the $10,000 amount suggests that it’s pretty low. Taco Bell’s survey gives out $1,000 per week. The satisfaction survey at a regional seafood restaurant gives me a code that garners a free dessert when I complete their survey. Finish Home Depot’s survey and you’re entered to win a $5,000 gift card good at the retailer. As I left the store I thought, ‘they know I just bought a paper icon. Instead of offering me and other people who buy the icon the chance to win $10,000, why wouldn’t they offer to donate $2 (or more!) to the cause in question whenever someone completes the survey?’ Why haven’t I ever seen this kin...

Walgreens and JDRF Right now at Walgreens…the giant pharmacy and retail store chain with more than 5,800 stores in the United States and Puerto Rico… they’re selling $1 paper icons for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF). This is an annual campaign and I bought one to gauge how it’s changed over the years. (Short list… they don’t do the shoe as a die cut anymore; the paper icon is now an 8¾ x 4¼ rectangle. Another interesting change; one side is now in Spanish). The icon has a bar code and Jacob, the clerk, scanned it and handed me a receipt as we finished the transaction. At the bottom was an 800-number keyed to a customer satisfaction survey. Dial the number, answer some questions and you’re entered into a drawing for $10,000 between now and the end of September 2007. I don’t know what their response rate is, but the $10,000 amount suggests that it’s pretty low. Taco Bell’s survey gives out $1,000 per week. At a regional seafood restaurant they give me a code that garner...

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...

Paper icons can be a license to print money if all the elements come together right. But there’s always been the challenge of how to display them. Paper icons, others call them ‘pinups,’ are small pieces of printed paper, oftentimes displaying the charity’s logo, sold for $1 or more, and benefiting a cause. Usually they’re displayed in-store, perhaps hung from fishing line, or taped to the store’s windows. Twenty CiCi’s Pizza Buffet locations in Georgia have come up with a fun idea of how to display the paper icons for their charity of choice, Special Olympics Georgia. Those Georgia CiCi’s locations began selling Special Olympics paper icons for $1 starting on July 16. On Monday, August 13, 2012 they had a kind of inflection point whereby they challenged their customers to buy enough paper icons on that day to cover a law enforcement vehicle. Fun idea! In addition, on Monday, August 13, CiCi’s donated 10 percent of sales to Special Olympics Georgia. "At CiCi's we care about o...

In the moments and hours after the Super Bowl advertising executives appear like earthworms after a rainstorm to grade and critique the television ads. Never mind that very few of these experts have ever actually produced a Super Bowl ad, much less one that would pass muster with their equally critical peers! So not one more word on the 2012 Super Bowl ads, at least from me. Instead I want to raise the banner for a kind of cause marketing I’d like to see actually develop. The idea was prompted by a trip to Walgreens when I purchased a paper icon benefiting the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation. At the bottom of the Walgreen receipt there was a website toll-free phone number. Dial the number, answer some questions and you’re entered into a drawing for $10,000. Other companies that do this direct you to a website URL. I don’t know what their response rate is, but the $10,000 amount suggests that it’s pretty low. Taco Bell’s survey gives out $1,000 per week. At a regional seafood rest...

If you go to a charity gala in the United States the price of the tickets is tax deductible after the cost of the meal and other benefits is subtracted. If you donate used household items or a used car to a 501(c)(3), you get a tax receipt from the charity equal to the fair market value of the donation. Donations of bonds or stock or art or gold or real property are all likewise tax deductible. But currently cause marketing donations are not tax deductible. The paper icon at the left benefiting my state's Special Olympics chapter from a local grocery chain made my wonder… again … why Americans can’t get a tax deduction for charitable donations generated through cause marketing efforts? When you buy the paper icon… available in $1, $3 and $5 versions… the clerk tears off the bottom portion, scans it, and hands it back to you to sign. After you’ve done so, you keep the top portion and bottom half gets displayed in the store, a chain called Harmons . It would be a simple matter for t...