Cause Marketing

Every business day in this blog I chronicle the best and worst of cause marketing. As you seek inspiration for where to take your own cause marketing you must eschew the bad. But you must also learn how to refuse the good. I was reminded of this by an anecdote about Steve Jobs in a book I’ve been reading called ‘ The Idea Hunter ,’ by Andy Boynton and Bill Fischer. They tell about how Jobs was speaking to a group of executives at Yahoo when the subject of saying no to bad ideas came up. “That’s easy,” said Jobs. “The challenge is in saying no to good ideas.” Jobs came back to this theme more than once and in one instance was quoted thusly: “People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully.” Anyone with a modicum of judgment knows the stinkers. But it’s the good ideas that require real expertise to deal with. That’s because if you le...

Anatomy of a Multi-Phase Cause-Related Marketing Sponsorship Last weekend, May 31 and June 1, the Children’s Miracle Network aired their 25th annual telethon, called ‘ Celebration '. Now more than ever Celebration is a sponsorship vehicle and as it happens, I caught their recognition of Carmike Cinemas , a cause-related marketing sponsorship that even today is unusually well-rounded, if I say so myself. Here were the elements back when I sold the sponsorship in 1998: During the month of May in the lead up to the telethon, Carmike would broadcast on their more than 2,500 screens a movie trailer featuring then San Francisco 49er Quarterback (and now a member of the NFL Hall of Fame) Steve Young . Steve narrated the story of a kid who was desperately sick but had gotten better at on of CMN’s affiliated hospitals. The trailer was about 70 seconds long. Carmike would post movie-style and sized posters in their frames featuring the promotion the child and Steve Young. Carmike would sell ...

Blogger's Note: What follows is a profile and interview I wrote of Children's Miracle Network co-founder Joe Lake, who was recently installed as the CEO of the Starfish Television Network . This originally appeared in the Salt Lake Enterprise on Monday, May 11. Lining the walls of the office of Joe Lake, the new CEO of the Starfish Television Network, a 501(c) (3) public charity and television network founded in 2006 and headquartered in Midvale, are pictures of the many celebrities he has worked with. There are pictures of Joe with Goldie Hawn, Sidney Poitier, Jeff Bridges, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Rob Lowe and Walter Cronkite, and affectionately-autographed publicity stills from Bob Hope and Rich Little. It’s something you’d expect in the office of a Hollywood agent, or at a celebrity hangout in Manhattan, or Chicago or Vegas. But the Starfish Television Network, whose mission is to tell the stories of nation’s nonprofits in a way that educates, entertains and inspires its ...

An Old Campaigner Returns to the Dance Floor Right now in the United States ballroom dancing... of all things... is hot, hot, hot. It seems that everything old is new again. For instance, Children's Miracle Network, where I spent seven years, is the beneficiary of an old-school cause-related marketing campaign of the kind I haven't seen from them in years. To be fair, the staff at Children’s Miracle Network has forgotten more about cause-related marketing than most practitioners will ever know. I mean that literally. Perhaps 12 or 13 years ago they deliberately started scaling back the amount of garden-variety cause-related marketing they do. Back in the day Children’s Miracle Network was the king of cause-related marketing in the United States. To cite just one example, Children’s Miracle Network had a whole themed FSI to themselves that came out the exact weekend of their annual telethon, which aired on about 215 TV stations in the United States and Canada. Nowadays the onl...

How I Miss the Old Children’s Miracle Network Telethon Children’s Miracle Network , the giant charity that raises money for 175 children’s hospitals in the United States and Canada had its annual telethon this last weekend, such as it is. They don’t call a telethon any more; haven’t called it that for perhaps 15 years. But still I miss it. Of course this is just personal nostalgia. I wrote the old-school Children’s Miracle Network Telethon for five years, and so I was intimately involved with its production. My first CMN Telethon featured Kenny Loggins and Michael McDonald and they sang a kick-butt version of the Doobie Brothers’ hit “What a Fool Believes,” which they co-wrote and for which they won a Grammy Award. I don’t know how it looked and sounded to the TV audience, but my mind’s eye will never forget watching them live from the outdoor stage at Disneyland’s Videopolis ! That night we kept a skeleton audience who stayed for a long list of comedy performers do sets right on the...

Camelbak did a cause marketing campaign with Water.org last year wherein the hydration company created a specially-branded version of its water bottles that the charity sold as a fundraiser. You may have seen Matt Damon, Water.org’s cofounder, telling David Letterman about the bottle during an appearance in December 2010. Thanks in no small part to Damon’s celebrity and the pitch-perfect strategic fit between Camelbak and Water.org, new bottles are forthcoming. Later this month Camelbak will expand the relationship with a Facebook effort. In an exclusive interview with causemarketing.biz at the Summer 2011 Outdoor Retailer Show in Salt Lake City, here’s Shannon Stearns, senior marketing manager at Camelbak, to explain it.

It has been my pleasure (and, occasionally, my displeasure) to work with celebrities in cause campaigns over the years. Shannon Miller , the most decorated US female gymnast ever, told me scary stalker stories on a long drive together on the Gulf Coast of Alabama. Baseball Hall of Famer Reggie Jackson was not quite lucid the night I escorted him through a charity cocktail party. I once put $5,000 on my credit card to pay for a dinner for 15 sponsor reps, Grammy-winner Amy Grant , and me. I walked into Kenny Loggins ’ dressing room one time when he had his hair up in curlers. One night when I was sitting with actor-singer John Schneider he held forth ( at length! ) on the topic of females calling themselves ‘actresses’ rather than ‘actors.’ In short, I’ve had a certain amount of experience with celebrities, especially the lower wattage variety. Which is why I’m a little surprised by the way the pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline threw John McEnroe under the bus with this ad that...