Skip to main content

Old School Cause-Related Marketing for the Web 2.0 Era

I don’t remember the last time I saw a cause-related marketing campaign for which the donation was predicated on consumers redeeming a coupon.

But right now for every $1 off coupon you redeem for Bausch & Lomb’s ReNu multipurpose contact lens solution, they’ll give a $1 donation to Susan G. Komen For the Cure. The donation is capped at $400,000 and $300,000 is guaranteed.

Back in the day, here in the United States, a plurality of cause-related marketing campaigns for packaged goods were based on coupon redemption. Now I’d say they’re the exception.

But here’s the Web 2.0 twist. The coupon isn’t in this ad from the May 2008 Cookie Magazine, a parenting magazine for mothers. Instead the ad directs you to the campaign website renucares.com.

To print the coupon you’re required to enter your name and email address. If you've already bought ReNu you can enter a code from the bottle to make the $1 donation. The website also has three short videos of people affected by breast cancer (two of which are from boys!). The site allows you to email those three stories to friends.

You can share your own story of how you’ve been affected by breast cancer, but only in writing. Too bad they don’t allow people to share videos, too.

There’s a ‘support the cause’ tab at the top of the website that I assumed would allow me to make a direct donation to Susan G. Komen. Instead it explains the campaign.

An explanation of the campaign is necessary, of course. But after watching the stories I’ll bet someone would have been willing to make a donation to Susan G. Komen.

I like the campaign although it seems a little ‘off-the-shelf’ to me.

In an inflationary environment like the United States is going through, premium-priced items like ReNu are potentially in trouble. The full retail price for 24 ounces of ReNu is right around $21, although you probably are likely to pay something closer to $18. With the pressure on personal and family budgets, it’s easy to find (and put up with) cheaper substitutes for ReNu. Sam’s Club will sell you 48 ounces of multipurpose cleaning solution for about $8.

My point is that Bausch & Lomb needs a cause campaign like this to help preserve its pricing power. Because so much is on the line here, Bausch & Lomb’s total donation of $300,000 - $400,000 seems too low, as does the per unit donation. Remember, research shows that higher donations help move product.

By contrast, Yoplait gives $0.10 per carton to Susan G. Komen, which represents from around 10 to 20 percent of the purchase price. Even at $18 for ReNu, a $1 donation represents just 5.6 percent of the purchase price.

I wonder how they would have done if ReNu dropped the coupon offer and offered a full $2 to Komen?
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

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...
Post a Comment
Read more

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...
2 comments
Read more

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...
Post a Comment
Read more