Scaling Your Cause Marketing

Lessons from Lord Stanley’s Trophy

The Anaheim Ducks of the National Hockey League won the League’s championship on June 6 and with it the right to hold the Stanley Cup for the next year.

The Stanley Cup is the most storied trophy in professional sport in North America, dating to 1893. Unlike other trophies it’s permanent. That is, a new trophy is not made for each championship. It’s also the only trophy that is engraved with the names of the players and management from each championship team.

How do they manage that without making the trophy jinormous?

Well the trophy itself stays the same size; about three-feet tall and 35 pounds. It features a cup at the top with graduated bands or rings below that. Beneath those are five larger bands of the same size. Each of those bands has space for 13 championships. As they fill, the band at the top is removed and displayed at Hockey Hall of Fame and a new blank band is added to the bottom. Using this method, the Stanley Cup trophy could still be around for another 114 years. Even longer.

In short, the Stanley Cup is built to scale up.

But this wasn’t always so. The modern shape of the Cup dates from 1958 or so and the decision to remove the topmost band as the trophy filled with names started only in 1991.

That raises some questions for cause marketers. Is your campaign built to scale up? And if it’s not, what can you do to adjust on the fly, as the NHL has with the Stanley Cup Trophy?

Take some lessons from Lord Stanley’s trophy.

“Begin with the end in mind.” The original part of the Cup filled up quickly with engraved names and so the graduated bands were added beneath. As those filled, the first option considered was to continue to add graduated bands. But that would have eventually proved unwieldy. With the five large bands, they lit upon a system that could scale infinitely.

You can learn on the fly in your cause marketing too. But if you want your campaign to be able to grow you need to put in place systems that will enable that growth. Stephen R. Covey put it best, “begin with the end in mind.”

Give your campaign some personality. Babies have been baptized in the Cup. Dogs have taken their kibble from the Cup. By tradition winners of the Cup drink champagne from the bowl. At the Anaheim Ducks championship party on June 9 Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger hoisted the Cup high above his head in the classic style (see above). So have countless other non-players. But professional hockey players have a superstition about even touching the trophy if their team didn’t win it.

Maybe you’ll invent the next great cause marketing promotion that will be copied forever after and maybe you won’t. But even if you’re just doing another label or cap or paper icon campaign, you can and should give it some personality.

Pass on the lore. Lore is knowledge or teaching that’s been passed on. As it tours the Stanley Cup is accompanied by minders from the Hockey Hall of Fame. Their job is to protect the Cup, make travel arrangements, handle scheduling and the like. But of course they also are the ambassadors of the cup responsible for passing down the dos and don’ts. Charities and agencies commonly suffer from horrendous turnover. But unless there’s a system for passing on the knowledge of how best to run your campaign, that knowledge could walk out the door forever when the key person leaves your firm.

Make your campaign transparent. Want to know who was on the Montreal Canadiens with Henri Richard in 1970-71? It’s there on the Stanley Cup for all to see. Likewise your cause marketing campaign will scale better if it’s transparent. That is, if people easily and quickly understand the premise, if they know what will happen with the money and if they know the charity will be a good steward of the money, no matter the amount.

Batting Your Eyelashes at Prescription Drug Cause Marketing

I’m a little chary about making sweeping pronouncements, but I believe I've just seen the first cause marketing promotion in the U.S. involving a prescription drug. The drug is from Allergan and it’s called Latisse , “the first and only FDA-approved prescription treatment for inadequate or not enough eyelashes.” The medical name for this condition is hypotrichosis. Latisse is lifestyle drug the way Viagra or Propecia are. That is, no one’s going to die (except, perhaps, of embarrassment) if their erectile dysfunction or male pattern baldness or thin eyelashes go untreated. Which means the positioning for a product like Latisse is a little tricky. Allergan could have gone with the sexy route as with Viagra or Cialis and showed lovely women batting their new longer, thicker, darker eyelashes. But I’ll bet that approach didn’t test well with women. (I’m reminded of a joke about the Cialis ads from a comedian whose name I can’t recall. He said, “Hey if my erection lasts longer than ...

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 ...

Chili’s and St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital

I was in Chili’s today and I ordered their “Triple-Dipper,” a three appetizer combo. While I waited for the food, I noticed another kind of combo. Chili’s is doing a full-featured cause-related marketing campaign for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. There was a four-sided laminated table tent outlining the campaign on the table. When the waitress brought the drinks she slapped down Chili’s trademark square paper beverage coasters and on them was a call to action for an element of the campaign called ‘Create-A-Pepper,’ a kind of paper icon campaign. The wait staff was all attired in black shirts co-branded with Chili’s and St. Jude. The Create-A-Pepper paper icon could be found in a stack behind the hostess area. The Peppers are outlines of Chili’s iconic logo meant to be colored. I paid $1 for mine, but they would have taken $5, $10, or more. The crayons, too, were co-branded with the ‘Create-A-Pepper’ and St. Jude’s logos. There’s also creatapepper.com, a microsite, but again wi...

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