Lack of Integration Hurts Lilly Pulitzer Cause Marketing Jubilee

In celebration of her fiftieth year in business, fashion designer Lilly Pulitzer... in conjunction with eight celebrity moms... is conducting a cause marketing campaign benefiting the Epidermolysis Bullosa Medical Research Foundation. EB is a rare and especially heartbreaking genetic skin disorder.

The celebrity moms include Gwyneth Paltrow, Elisabeth Hasselbeck, Garcelle Beauvais-Nilon, Angie Harmon, Debra Messing, Marcia Cross, Bridget Moynahan, Catherine Bell, and Brooke Shields.

When you buy outfits from Pulitzer’s ‘Colorful Cause Jubilee Collection for Summer 2009’ proceeds benefit the EBMRF.

The mom and me swimsuit collection illustrated to the left is from the Gwyneth Paltrow collection.

I have my usual qualms about the ‘proceeds’ language. But more than that I think Lilly Pulitzer missed some tricks here, almost all related to a lack of integration.

The pronouncement was made in mid-April, yet the Pulitzer blog has only two posts, including the announcement itself. There’s a few more in Facebook and a smattering in Twitter. On the Lilly Pulitzer website the promotion itself is obscured by the title in the menu board “Jubilee.” If you weren't looking for the word 'Jubilee,' you'd never know to associate it with the cause marketing promotion.

If you come to any of the pages for the celebrity designs any way except through the Jubilee area of the website, you’d be hard pressed to conclude that there was a cause marketing promotion in place.

Lilly Pulitzer’s colorful clothing has a fan base. But for customers in nearly 2/5ths of the States in the U.S., the only place to buy the clothing is online. So if individual product pages that are part of the promotion don’t draw the connection between the product and the cause, there’s a meaningful number of customers who are unlikely to learn about it on the Lilly Pulitzer website itself!

Nowadays you just can't presume that visitors to your website navigate their way to individual pages of your site starting at your home page and proceeding in a linear fashion. Every page of a website must ... to some degree... stand on its own.

Moreover in a case where the company has picked a charity that isn’t well known, like EBMRF, it’s crucial that there be a note or two of explanation about the why of that support. If it’s personal, say Lilly Pulitzer herself has a grandchild or one of the employees at Lilly Pulitzer has a nephew or niece with the condition it would help the promotion if customers knew that. And, rest assured, that could be communicated without exploiting any kids.

Even if it’s not personal, customers need to know the why of it to make sense of it in their own minds. It's not enough to say it's a 'good cause.' I, personally, know of hundreds of good causes. Perhaps the cause was persoanlly affecting to Lilly Pultizer herself. Maybe the cause itself is wonderfully efficient. Or their research approach is especially innovative. Customers want to know the why of a company's support for a charity that is featured in this way.

Two parting thoughts: A limited number of the celebrity designed outfits are available. More could be made of that scarcity in the promotion. Lilly Pultizer might have considered making at least one item of each celebrity’s line super exclusive and sold it at a premium price with correspondingly higher percentage of the proceeds going to EBMRF.

It might even be fun to encourage a sense of 'competition' between the celebrity moms over whose line sells the best. Imagine Brooke leading but then falling behind Angie Harmon's line. She might tell her agent to book her on Ellen or Tyra to make up the lost ground.

Finally, I know it’s part of Lilly Pulitzer's branding, but the pastel-colored type on the website combined with mice-type sized font, made some pages hell for me to read.

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...

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