Save Matt: Philips and the American Heart Association

PR-supported cause-related marketing

It’s probably fair to say that more cause-related marketing campaigns are supported by public relations than by advertising.

This is a sophisticated audience so there’s no need to detail the differences between advertising and public relations. Suffice it to say that while PR has greater credibility, it’s challenging to get the frequency using PR alone that you can get with advertising. Advertising offers frequency, but it can certainly be expensive and it’s less credible than PR.

Illustrated is an example of PR-supported cause-related marketing undertaken by RoyalPhilips Electronics to promote products like their OnSite Heart Defibrillator at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah.

Park City is very easy to get to and has a number of charms besides natural beauty and first-rate skiing. And so the Festival draws a lot of celebrities and a fairly chi-chi crowd. As a result when you watch Entertainment Tonight or Access Hollywood or any of the other entertainment news programs chances are that during the run of Festival, it’s a lead-pipe cinch that many of those shows originate from Park City.

As a result of the celebrities, the media attention, and the crowds, Sundance has become a promotional vehicle.

And so Philips along with other companies has established a presence in Park City for length of the Festival. The $41-billion (sales) Dutch giant has a drop-in location called The Philips Simplicity Lounge, where you can ogle their wares, including their lineup of home defibrillators.

While there’s plenty of national and international press at the Festival, there’s also plenty of competition vying for their attention. In a crowded marketplace how do you stand out? Philips is using PR supported cause-related marketing.

Their campaign, called “Save Matt” brings celebrities into the Simplicity Lounge to demo their home defibrillators on a “paper mannequin training mat.” After the demo, the dressed-in-black celebs, are asked to sign Matt the mat, which will subsequently be auctioned off on eBay for the benefit of the American Heart Association. In addition, Philips will also make a donation of $20,000 to the AHA.

I saw notice of the campaign in the hometown newspaper buried on page B-7 next to the obituaries. Needless to say Philips is hoping for better press coverage than that.

To do better their best bet is to work their strategy. They need to be snapping pictures every time a celebrity signs Matt and release those photos with a caption. There’s a lot of paparazzi at the Festival who will follow the right celebrity into locations like the Simplicity Lounge. So someone on the Philips staff with a lot of personality and persistence needs to be pulling celebs into the lounge.

The defibrillators are meant as a first-response to sudden cardiac arrest (SCA). Chances are there are celebrities at the Festival whose life has been touched by SCA. They need to find those celebrities and get them to the Simplicity Lounge. For the price of a defibrillator (about $1,270 at Sam’s Club, Staples, Walgreen, etc.) they could probably get that celeb to speak about their experience at a press conference.

Cause Marketing: The All Packaging Edition

One way to activate a cause marketing campaign when the sponsor sells a physical product is on the packaging. I started my career in cause marketing on the charity side and I can tell you that back in the day we were thrilled to get a logo on pack of a consumer packaged good (CPG) or even just a mention. Since then, there’s been a welcome evolution of what sponsors are willing and able to do with their packaging in order to activate their cause sponsorships. That said, even today some sponsors don’t seem to have gotten the memo that when it comes to explaining your cause campaign, more really is more, even on something as small as a can or bottle. The savviest sponsors realize that their only guaranteed means of reaching actual customers with a cause marketing message is by putting it on packaging. And the reach and frequency of the media on packaging for certain high-volume CPG items is almost certainly greater than radio, print or outdoor advertising, and, in many cases, TV. More to

Why Even Absurd Cause-Related Marketing Has its Place

Buy a Bikini, Help Cure Cancer New York City (small-d) fashion designer Shoshonna Lonstein Gruss may have one of the more absurd cause-related marketing campaigns I’ve come across lately. When you buy the bikini or girls one-piece swimsuit at Bergdorf-Goodman in New York shown at the left all sales “proceeds” benefit Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center . Look past the weak ‘ proceeds ’ language, which I always decry, and think for a moment about the incongruities of the sales of swimsuits benefiting the legendary Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. Cancer has nothing to do swimming or swimsuits or summering in The Hamptons for that matter. And it’s not clear from her website why Shoshanna, the comely lass who once adorned the arm of comedian Jerry Seinfeld, has chosen the esteemed cancer center to bestow her gifts, although a web search shows that she’s supported its events for years. Lesser critics would say that the ridiculousness of it all is a sign that cause-related marketing is

A Clever Cause Marketing Campaign from Snickers and Feeding America

Back in August I bought this cause-marketed Snickers bar during my fourth trip of the day to Home Depot. (Is it even possible to do home repairs and take care of all your needs with just one trip to Home Depot / Lowes ?) Here’s how it works: Snickers is donating the cost of 2.5 million meals to Feeding America, the nation’s leading hunger-relief charity. On the inside of the wrapper is a code. Text that code to 45495… or enter it at snickers.com… and Snickers will donate the cost of one meal to Feeding America, up to one million additional meals. The Feeding America website says that each dollar you donate provides seven meals. So Snickers donation might be something like $500,000. But I like that Snickers quantified its donations in terms of meals made available, rather than dollars. That’s much more concrete. It doesn’t hurt that 3.5 million is a much bigger number than $500,000. I also like the way they structured the donation. By guaranteeing 2.5 million meals, the risk of a poor

Cause Marketing

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