Skip to main content

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

Popular posts from this blog

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...

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...

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...