Cause-Related Marketing You Can Drink To

I Detect Hints of Hickory with Subtle Notes of Rosin and Glove Leather

Late in May three star players from the Atlanta Braves baseball team debuted their latest charitable endeavors, table wines from Chile and Spain with the bottles featuring their images and with proceeds from the sales benefiting the charities of their choice.

The players… Chipper Jones, Brian McCann and Tom Glavine… unveiled Chipper Chardonnay, McCann Merlot, and (wait for it) Cabernet Glavignon. They sell for around for $14 at retail outlets like Kroger and Wal-Mart and proceeds benefit the Miracle League, the Rally Foundation for Childhood Cancer Research and CURE Childhood Cancer respectively.

The Atlanta trio join professional baseball players from the New York Yankees, Boston Red Sox and Cincinnati Reds and several legends of the game with their own labels. There are two former NFL players...Dan Marino and Bobby Herbert... with labels, and two players from the National Hockey League. Two special labels for red and white wines benefit the AIDS Research Alliance.

The brands are: Edendale Cellars, Longball Cellars, 500 Home Run Club, Hat Trick Cellars, Gridiron Cellars, and Marino Estates.

The approach is the brainstorm of Event Wines of Winchendon, Mass., which “donates 100% of the celebrity’s proceeds to their chosen charity. The celebrity does not make one penny.”

That’s some tricky language which I take to mean that the celebrity gets a piece of the sale as a kind of personal licensing arrangement, which he agrees to donate in full to his charity of choice. Borrowing on the athlete’s notoriety, Event Wines thereby gets their product into sales channels they probably couldn’t normally be able to penetrate. It’s a kind of end run around normal distribution channels.

The athlete gets some money for his case and another chance to promote his status locally as a good citizen, this time in the wine aisle at the grocery store. And depending on how the deal is structured, it’s potentially tax deductible for the celebrity. And these days, a celebrity without a charity affiliation is either unsociable, unstable, or has an incompetent agent.

A related company will put your personalized label on bottles of a sparkling wine, cabernet sauvignon, chardonnay and merlot for your wedding, corporate event or charitable endeavor.

It’s a clever campaign that would be a whole lot better if there was some transparency about the donation amount.

I genuinely admire the creativity of the campaign. And someone at Event Wines is a terrific salesperson. Because to make this happen, agents had to be sold, along with players, and retail outlets. And if anyone could do this campaign, someone already would have.

(Tip of the hat to Kate, a member of the Cause-Related Marketing Googlegroup, for sharing this).

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...

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