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).

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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