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

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

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