Cause Marketing Odds and Ends

Electrolux is back with perky daytime talker Kelly Ripa just in time for Earth Day. The most interesting wrinkle in this year’s campaign is a kind of virtual paper icon campaign for the benefiting charity, Global Green USA. The money is donated by Electrolux a dollar at a time to Global Green USA’s green schools initiative when you virtually plant a flower.

KaBOOM, the nonprofit playground builder, convinced two-time Dancing With the Stars winner Julianne Hough (who spent part of her growing up years just a few miles from where I live) to pony up $100,000 for charity. The donation is also released a dollar at a time when you enter photos and descriptions of playgrounds in your neighborhood. Notably ecumenical, the $100K goes not to KaBOOM, but to six other charities like Jumpstart, First Book, YMCA, etc. There’s also a contest element to meet Hough. (The picture to the left comes from juliannehough.com)

Portland, Oregon-based fashion e-tailer saraseven.com launched with the promise to donate five percent of sales to two charities: 3 percent to Compassion International’s Unsponsored Children’s Fund and 2 percent to International Justice Mission.

Throughout April, when you buy Ariel Aparicio’s cover of the Psychedelic Furs’ classic Pretty in Pink on iTunes, Aparacio will donate $0.54 cents to the New York affiliate of Susan G. Komen for the Cure.

OyHello in India, a competitor with social networking sites Orkut and Facebook, was founded with the tagline ‘Unite for the Cause.’ OyHello is less than six months old, and so far the charity partner is unidentified on OyHello’s site.

In March, social entrepreneur enabler Echoing Green in conjunction with Crowdspring, the site that helps small business find graphical design and other kinds of help, held a t-shirt design competition called Designed for Change. The winning t-shirt was sold on the Echoing Green website and proceeds benefit new social entrepreneurs. The winning designer, Audree Rowe, received a $250 cash prize for her birds on a wire design.

(BTW, what's a fellow got to do to get nominated for one of Echoing Green's famous fellowships?)

With each pain admission to its new movie grandiloquently called Earth, Disney will plant a tree in the Brazilian Atlantic Forest. The movie opens Wednesday, April 22… Earth Day.

Comments

Emarketed said…

thanks for the info!!!

4/21/2009 11:42 AM

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...

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-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...

Cause Marketing

Search This Blog