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.

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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