LIVESTRONG Cause Marketing

If you're anything like me then you've watched the growth and development of Lance Armstrong's LIVESTRONG brand with a mixture of awe and envy.

It started with the iconic yellow rubber bracelets, which since 2004 have generated more than $70 million for the Lance Armstrong Foundation.

Over the arc of the bracelet's popularity they have been imitated, parodied and worn by vast array of non-biking celebrities, as well as the hoi polloi.

All guided by the legendary marketers at Nike and its long-time agency Weiden+Kennedy.

So popular and well-known was the yellow bracelet that there was a long while when it seemed like every fundraising brainstorming session I had with a charity somebody suggested a bracelet campaign, as if lightning could be caught in a bottle a second time.

(In that way it's reminiscent of all the meetings I've been in when people suggested that all they needed to really get their pet project off the ground was an appearance on Oprah!)

From the start Nike built LIVESTRONG like another one of its famous brands and for sometime now Nike has been selling LIVESTRONG shoes and Apparel.

The LIVESTRONG campaign is the closest I can recall Nike coming to transactional cause marketing.

Envious as I am, I think Nike has misplayed its hand with this ad, which appeared in the January 2010 issue of Lucky magazine.

What exactly is the headline "We are More than One" supposed to mean?

I assume we are meant to draw some kind of connecting line between the unconquered spirits of cancer survivors, which is what LIVESTRONG is about, and the will it takes to win to Olympic gold medals or throw a no-hitter in baseball, or win seven Tours de France.

In truth, a there's only one athlete in the world who can draw that line and that's Lance Armstrong. No one has won more Tour de France championships than Armstrong, a feat made all the more remarkable considering his well-known 1996 bout with testicular cancer.

That said, all the featured athletes in the ad are survivors of cancer or disease.

But aside from Armstrong, did you know that? I know I had to look it up.

Laurel Wessner, a twin, fought Hodgkin's lymphoma. Jon Lester survived non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, and Sanya Richards has a form of vasculitis, an inflammatory disease that affects the blood vessels.

You have to be a pretty close student of sport to know those facts. But if you're not, this ad doesn't make much sense.

People aren't their diseases, I get that. But an ad with this headline merits a sentence that explains not only their athletic prowess, but their heroic battle with disease.

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

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