Cause Marketing Potpourri

Some miscellaneous items from the world of cause-related marketing, and corporate philanthropy.

Economy Slowing Philanthropic Giving by Small Business
A survey of small businesses, published by The Chronicle of Philanthropy and sponsored by Advanta, finds them enthusiastic for charitable giving, but retrenching in the slowing economy.

Small business… companies with fewer than 500 employees… is the most vibrant chunk of the U.S. economy employing about half the nation’s workforce. In the survey of small business 66 percent who donate through the company, donate cash, 51 percent volunteer, 41 percent give services and 39 percent make in-kind donations.

The economy has affected the mood of small business when it comes to philanthropy. Sixty percent say the economic turmoil has negatively affected their charitable giving. Thirty-eight percent say they’ve given less this year, 47 percent say their philanthropy has held steady and 14 percent say they’ve given more.

mGive Donates TV Commercial for Keep a Child Alive
mGive, which provides the mechanism that allows charitable donations to be added to donor’s phone bills in $5 chunks, donated an ad buy on MTV to Keep a Child Alive, the charity for kids with AIDS in Africa.

As I’ve posted in the past, mGive has been successfully used in the past in conjunction with outdoor media and events. But this is the first time mGive has been used with a TV ad. The creative features singer and songwriter Alicia Keys.

Advanta’s Ideablob Open to Charities and Social Entrepreneurs, Gives Away $10,000 a Month
Ideablob, a social media site for entrepreneurs, charities and social entrepreneurs gives away $10,000 a month to ideas that receive the most votes from users.

To get a feel for it, I posted my own Ideablob and my takeaway is that charities and social entrepreneurs that could rally voters, could probably finish in the money.

Check my Ideablob here.

OfficeMax Expanding Its Line of Office Materials Made from Trash
OfficeMax and TerraCycle…which makes pencils, paper, backpacks, binders and other items from materials like elephant poop, coffee grinds, wine corks, cookie wrappers, and computer diskettes… are doubling the line available in OfficeMax stores.

TerraCycle donates a few pennies to charity for items like used soda bottles, wine corks, drink pouches and the like.

I’m giving TerraCycle short shrift here, but do visit their site and check out one of the most interesting business models anywhere.

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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