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.

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...

Cause-Related Marketing with Customer Receipts

Walgreens and JDRF Right now at Walgreens…the giant pharmacy and retail store chain with more than 5,800 stores in the United States and Puerto Rico… they’re selling $1 paper icons for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF). This is an annual campaign and I bought one to gauge how it’s changed over the years. (Short list… they don’t do the shoe as a die cut anymore; the paper icon is now an 8¾ x 4¼ rectangle. Another interesting change; one side is now in Spanish). The icon has a bar code and Jacob, the clerk, scanned it and handed me a receipt as we finished the transaction. At the bottom was an 800-number keyed to a customer satisfaction survey. Dial the number, answer some questions and you’re entered into a drawing for $10,000 between now and the end of September 2007. I don’t know what their response rate is, but the $10,000 amount suggests that it’s pretty low. Taco Bell’s survey gives out $1,000 per week. At a regional seafood restaurant they give me a code that garner...

An Interview with Cause-Related Marketing Pioneer Jerry Welsh

Jerry Welsh is the closest thing cause marketing has to a father. In 1983 after a number of regional cause-related marketing efforts, Welsh, who was then executive vice president of worldwide marketing and communications at American Express looked out his window in lower Manhattan at the Statue of Liberty. The Statue was then undergoing a major refurnishing, and in a flash Welsh determined to undertake the first modern national cause marketing campaign. I say modern because almost 100 years before in January 1885, the Statue of Liberty was sitting around in crates in New York warehouses because the organization building the pedestal ran out of money. And so Joseph Pulitzer, the publisher of the newspaper called The World , proposed a very grassroots solution reminiscent in its own way to Welsh’s cause-related marketing. Pulitzer ran an editorial promising he would print the name of everyone who donated even a penny. Sure enough pennies, along with dimes and nickels, quarters a...

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