Nationwide Cause Marketing with Twitter

Mash up a telethon, the nationwide live showing of an earnest documentary film about three women fighting poverty in their respective countries, CARE, ONE, Fathom, and Twitter, and what do you get?

We've seen local and regional Tweet-a-Thons, but this will apparently be the first-ever nationwide sponsored Tweet-a-Thon.

From Tuesday, March 3 to Thursday March 5 when you Twitter with the phrase “#apowerfulnoise” in your Tweet, National CineMedia Fathom will make a $0.10 donation per CARE, up to 50,000 tweets, a rather modest $5,000.

The event culminates on Thursday, March 5 with the showing of the film “A Powerful Noise” at 450 movie theaters across the United States. The film will be followed by a live panel discussion that includes the likes of Christy Turlington Burns, Nicholas Kristof, Dr Helene Gayle, Madeleine Albricht, and Natalie Portman. You can submit a question to the panel here.

The documentary was produced by Sheila Johnson, a Global Ambassador for CARE, and cofounder of BET with her former husband Robert Johnson. She has a long list of other firsts including, it’s said, bragging rights as the first black female billionaire. (Oprah was the second, but she has since surpassed Johnson).

This is a pretty cool idea and I can imagine a lot of directions you could take starting with this approach.

But I cannot imagine a way in the world that the panel discussion doesn’t turn out to be a yawner. Either the film does its job or it doesn’t. But the addition of a panel discussion on the heals of the movie will neither mitigate a bad documentary or improve a good one.

Comments

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...

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...

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...

Cause Marketing

Search This Blog