Skip to main content

Cause-Related Marketing Potpourri

My email box has been filling up with releases from PR types about various campaigns. A handful are even about cause-related marketing!

Here then is a grab bag of worthy social marketing campaigns that don’t warrant their own posts, but are nonetheless worth mentioning.

Nov 19 was Luzianne Coffee’s “Non-Bitter Monday.” The event included trash pickups in five cities in Louisiana, and a $50,000 donation to be split among six charities: Make-A-Wish, Toys for Tots, Teach for America, Gulf Restoration Network, Habitat for Humanity, and America’s Wetland. The exact split is to be determined by votes collected at endbitterness.com. Voting ends March 31, 2008.

Reprise Media, a search engine marketing and optimization outfit out of New York City, and a division of Interpublic, has launched a pro bono initiative for nonprofits. Their first client is the Center for Global Development, a nonprofit think tank. Other nonprofits are invited to apply for Reprise’s SEM, SMM and SEO services at their website.

Microplace.com, a wholly-owned subsidiary of eBay launched in late October, offers people a way to loan money to the working poor in the developing world using the proven principles of microfinance, while receiving a return on their investment. Investments as small as $100 are accepted.

Origins Organics, which sells a line of organically-sourced skin care, hair care and bed and bath products in stores, is offering a branded reusable canvas bag. Quoting from the release: “100% of the profits from the purchase of this bag will be donated to OFRF (Organic Farming Research Foundation).”

Greatnonprofits.org follows the lead of Epinions, Zagats and Amazon and allows users to review their experiences with nonprofits. As of today featured nonprofits are overwhelmingly in Pittsburgh, Pa.

Some random thoughts:
  • Greatnotprofits.org may scare the hell out of a lot of nonprofits, hospitals for instance. I don’t know if greatnonprofits.org will be the final expression of user-generated content when it comes to nonprofits. But I do know that more than ever charities need to do a better job of managing all their stakeholder ‘touchpoints.’
  • The 100 percent of profits language in the Origins Organics offer is weak. And it’s hard to believe that the Organic Farming Research Foundation holds much built-in affinity for consumers.
  • It will be interesting to track how Microplace does. There are plenty of places to make donations in support of microfinance in the developing world. Will the addition of the profit motive expand the base of participants or contract it?
  • As for Luzianne, I dislike these mechanisms whereby there’s competition between charities. I don’t think it reflects well on Reily Foods, Luzianne’s owner, and I doubt it moves product as well as a more straightforward cause-related marketing campaign.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

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...
11 comments
Read more

Part 2: How Chili's Used Cause-Related Marketing to Raise $8.2 million for St. Jude

[Bloggers Note: In this second half of this post I discuss the nuts and bolts of how Chili's motivates support from its employees and managers and how St. Jude 'activates' support from Chili's. Read the first half here.] How does St. Jude motivate support from Chili’s front line employees and management alike? They call it ‘activation’ and they do so by the following: They share stories of St. Jude patients who were sick and got better thanks to the services they received at the hospital. Two stories in particular are personal for Chili’s staff. A Chili’s bartender in El Dorado Hills, California named Jeff Eagles has a younger brother who was treated at St. Jude. In both 2005 and 2006 Eagles was the campaign’s biggest individual fundraiser. John Griffin, a manager at the Chili’s in Conway, Arkansas had an infant daughter who was treated for retinoblastoma at St. Jude. They drew on the support Doug Brooks… the president and CEO of Brinker International, Chili’s parent co...
Post a Comment
Read more

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...
1 comment
Read more