Cause Marketing

Clients ask me all the time: have the breast cancer charities sucked out all the oxygen out of the atmosphere for cause marketing during October? That is, can anyone else do cause marketing during National Breast Cancer Awareness Month? I can't give a categorical answer, but here are three quick takes on cause marketing campaigns going on in this month that aren’t about breast cancer, plus a forth that is about breast cancer, only with fewer pink ribbons than usual. Sigg Drop of Hope Water Bottle for the Jane Goodall Institute . When you buy the Drop of Hope water bottle from Sigg , the Swiss aluminum bottle makers, they’ll donate $5 to the Jane Goodall Institute to build rainwater tanks for schoolchildren in Africa. The campaign is well-timed coming, as it does the heels of news that Sigg used BPA as an element in the plastic liner of its water bottles after first denying doing so. Benihana/Fuji Water Co-Promotion for Best Buddies . Last night at dinner with the fam at Benihana ...

Successful cause marketing appeals not only to your head, but to your heart as well. The head part comes easier for me and probably for many of you as well. So how do you inject heart into a cause marketing campaign? Ulta’s answer is to ask people to write their breast cancer stories in a letter and then post them in the front windows of their stores. They call it 'Windows of Love.' Ulta supports The Breast Cancer Research Foundation. Ulta is the largest discount cosmetics and fragrance retailer in the United States with more than 330 stores in some 38 States. There’s an Ulta store that I can almost coast down to from my house, so I went down there to check it out. The store devoted the better part of three of its four windows to the promotion. One of the window displays explained the promotion and the other two contained actual letters. The letters were unformatted. That is, so near as I could tell they were posted exactly as they were submitted. The challenge was that some of...

It has been my pleasure (and, occasionally, my displeasure) to work with celebrities in cause campaigns over the years. Shannon Miller , the most decorated US female gymnast ever, told me scary stalker stories on a long drive together on the Gulf Coast of Alabama. Baseball Hall of Famer Reggie Jackson was not quite lucid the night I escorted him through a charity cocktail party. I once put $5,000 on my credit card to pay for a dinner for 15 sponsor reps, Grammy-winner Amy Grant , and me. I walked into Kenny Loggins ’ dressing room one time when he had his hair up in curlers. One night when I was sitting with actor-singer John Schneider he held forth ( at length! ) on the topic of females calling themselves ‘actresses’ rather than ‘actors.’ In short, I’ve had a certain amount of experience with celebrities, especially the lower wattage variety. Which is why I’m a little surprised by the way the pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline threw John McEnroe under the bus with this ad that...