100 Percent Cause Marketing from the Rich and Talented

To get into Harvard, jewelry designer Joan Hornig made a deal not with the devil, but with her better angels: if she got in, she told herself, by the time she was 50 she would give away all her earnings to charity.

She does just that with her eponymous jewelry line sold on her website and at retail outlets like Bergdorf Goodman.

Like other ‘all benefits’ companies, 100 percent of her profits… year-round… are donated to charity.

When you purchase it online, you designate where you’d like the donation to go. Hornig also does exclusive lines for retailers that benefit predetermined charities. For instance the earrings above are from her Snowflake line at Bergdorf, which benefited UNICEF.

Hornig's jewelry is priced in the ‘if you gotta ask, you can’t afford it’ range.

It goes without saying that not everyone could manage this. Town & Country magazine reports that Hornig is independently wealthy. But the appeal to would-be consumers is mighty.

How easy it would be for someone looking at Hornig’s Leaf Cuff bracelet and say, ‘sure it’s $4,800, but all the profit from the sale goes to my charity of choice.'

The skeptic in me wonders about what incentive Hornig has to keep her costs low. I wonder about just how high her profit margins are. I wonder what salary she pays herself and what her overhead structure is like. As a for-profit business in the United States, she is under no obligation to disclose any of that.

It’s not impossible, of course, to do this completely without taint. Paul Newman… God rest his soul… never took a salary and had a reputation as a fierce cost cutter. I hope, and trust, that Hornig is still true to her better angels and cut from the same cloth as Newman.

Comments

Batting Your Eyelashes at Prescription Drug Cause Marketing

I’m a little chary about making sweeping pronouncements, but I believe I've just seen the first cause marketing promotion in the U.S. involving a prescription drug. The drug is from Allergan and it’s called Latisse , “the first and only FDA-approved prescription treatment for inadequate or not enough eyelashes.” The medical name for this condition is hypotrichosis. Latisse is lifestyle drug the way Viagra or Propecia are. That is, no one’s going to die (except, perhaps, of embarrassment) if their erectile dysfunction or male pattern baldness or thin eyelashes go untreated. Which means the positioning for a product like Latisse is a little tricky. Allergan could have gone with the sexy route as with Viagra or Cialis and showed lovely women batting their new longer, thicker, darker eyelashes. But I’ll bet that approach didn’t test well with women. (I’m reminded of a joke about the Cialis ads from a comedian whose name I can’t recall. He said, “Hey if my erection lasts longer than ...

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 ...

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 Marketing

Search This Blog