Cause-Related Marketing Tombola

In the UK a tombala is a revolving drum typically turned by hand and used in lotteries or raffles. Tombala also describes a small-scale lottery, like at a community event.

Today we have two things in our tombala. The first is a campaign from Denmark that uses glass bottle recycling to raise money for nonprofits. The second is from Cox Communications in the United States that is part Yelp.com, part AngiesList.com and a fundraiser for charities at the same time.

The Fortune at the Bottom of the Bottle
As a kid growing up I earned money by taking glass bottles back to stores for the $.o5 cent deposit. The beverage bottling companies put the kibosh on bottle deposits in most of the 50 states (and worldwide, for that matter). Still 11 states have bottle deposits. Worldwide bottle deposit laws are in force in parts of Canada, parts of Australia, in Germany, Scandinavia and Denmark.

Now in Denmark when you return bottles to the retailer Coop Denmark’s 14 Kvickly xtra stores, you can choose to have the deposits go to two charities, UNICEF Denmark or DanChurchAid. Since the campaign started in September 2007 it’s generated more than 120,000 Krone, or about $25,750.

That seems modest, but bear in mind that the campaign is taking place in just 14 stores and has been going on for only 7 months. This is a "fortune at the bottom of the pyramid" territory.

As I mentioned bottle deposits are only required in 11 States, but because they include two of the most populous, California and New York, about 30 percent of the U.S. population lives in places with bottle deposit laws. In other words, there’s a large enough population base living in States with bottle laws that this campaign could certainly be successfully adopted in the United States.

Kudzu.com Fundraiser

Cox Communications, the third largest cable television provider in the United States with operations in 15 States has recently launched a website cheekily called Kudzu.com that has an interesting cause-related marketing component. [Kudzu is hardy vine that was introduced to the South from East Asia. Now the whole Southeastern United States is covered in Kudzu!]

Kudzu.com is a search service to help locals identify service providers like landscape designers to help you control the kudzu climbing over your fence, or plumbers. But you can also find restaurant reviews and the like, as with Yelp.com. There’s a ranking system for providers, a little bit like Angie’s List. But unlike Angie’s List, there’s no subscription fee. Kudzu.com is free.

Review sites don’t have any value unless there are reviews posted there. So to sweeten the pot when you write a review, Kudzu.com will donate $.75 cents to your charity of choice. Kudzu .com wants charities to encourage people to write plenty of reviews as a fundraiser for their charity of choice. The headline reads “Easy fundraising without candy bars and magazines,” a nod to the kind of fundraising that is common for youth organizations in the United States.

The reviews on Kudzu.com are strongest in Cox’s market areas. But the fact is, Cox certainly wants Kudzu.com to be nationwide. So a Kudzu.com fundraising campaign could take place anywhere in the United States.

No word on deadlines, donation caps or the like.

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

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