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The Five Flavors of Cause-Related Marketing

At Alden Keene we use a handy-dandy chart we call “The Five Flavors of Cause-Related Marketing” that helps us build cause-related marketing campaigns for our clients. That’s the same chart I send you when you sign up for the Cause-Related Marketing GoogleGroup.

Until now, I’ve never published it on the blog. But the time seems ripe to share a version of it with all my readers. The chart we use is in graphic form and has more information. But what follows is substantially the same.

I need to give props to Professors Michael Jay Polansky and Richard Speed of the University of Newcastle and University of Melbourne respectively in Australia, who published it in their paper called “Linking Sponsorship and Cause-Related Marketing.”

Without further ado, The Five Flavors of Cause-Related Marketing:
  • Broad-Based. A large campaign, perhaps one the runs year-round, and generally has no limits on the donation that might be made. Example: the General Mills Box Tops for Education effort.
  • Limited. A campaign where the amount of donation is capped. For instance: Five pence goes to charity for each litre of petrol pumped up to ₤100,000.
  • Market focused. A campaign that targets a specific market. Example: A credit card issuer gives $3 to charity every time a new customer signs up for their card.
  • Replacement. In this type of campaign the donation has already been made or pledged to the charity and the fundraiser serves to replace that donation.
  • Multiphase. In a multiphase campaign, there may be several steps leading up to the donation. For instance, the Silk Soy Milk campaign that requires you to enter a number from the carton’s green cap, and which also enters you into a sweepstakes.
That’s the wide-world of cause-related marketing in five bullet points. Everything in cause-related marketing is just a variation on one of these themes.

Comments

Carolyn said…
Can you give an example of a "replacement" campaign?
filament said…
Is there any data available freely on the expenditure patterns on ad and marketing spending for cause marketing? A graph would be ideal
Paul Jones said…
Hi Filament:

The only outfit that tracks any part of this is called IEG. What IEG tracks is projected spending by sponsors on cause marketing.

To my knowledge they don't track actual spending on cause marketing or, for that matter, how much donation is generated for charities from cause marketing.

Their annual projections are available as a part of their subscription to the "IEG Sponsorship Report," which is $300 clams a year.

Here is the recent IEG cause marketing projections republished by a third party.

http://www.causemarketingforum.com/page.asp?ID=188

Warm regards,
Paul
filament said…
Hi Paul,

Thanks so much for the guidance but I already have this report. :-)

What I wanted is info on these three things:
1. Total amount spent on advertising of CRM projects (Total and year to year)
2. Graph of CRM marketing spending for the past 10 years
3. Graph of CRM advertising spending for the past 10 years.

Thanks
Paul Jones said…
Hi Filament:

You might check with someone at IEG to see if they have what you're looking for.

Their website is sponsorship.com.

They're they only game in town when it comes to tracking cause marketing.

Warm regards,
Paul

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