Cause Marketing… um… Magic

After a show in Palm Beach Florida in April 2006, David Copperfield and two companions were mugged at gunpoint by three assailants who asked for the magician’s wallet. Instead, Copperfield performed a sleight of hand, palming his wallet, phone and passport while turning out his pockets to suggest that he didn’t have anything to steal.

We have something like a sleight of hand going on with this ad for Clorox Bleach. It looks like cause marketing, with a dot.org website, something that looks like a nonprofit logo, and a mission to stop an eradicable tree disease, but in fact, there’s no cause marketing here.

This ad is from the Dec-Jan. 2009 issue of Parenting magazine and it’s the first of three consecutive pages of ads for Clorox Bleach. The headline reads: “Saving Trees Big and Small: Clorox Regular Bleach.

The art shows an ornament hanging from an evergreen branch. The body copy suggests that using Clorox Bleach to kill bacteria in water will prolong the life of live Christmas trees.

Ignore for a moment that the premise of the headline… ‘saving trees’… is a logical nonstarter since before a Christmas tree enters you home it has to be cut down first!

Concentrate instead on the column on the right that mentions that the State of California uses bleach-treated water to treat oak trees in the state suffering from a disease called Sudden Oak Death. So the bleach that the cash-strapped State uses to combat Sudden Oak Death comes as an in-kind donation from Clorox, right?

Who can say? The copy reads: “To help stop the disease from spreading, water used by the California Department of Forestry and nurseries is treated with bleach.”

Hm. Does that mean Clorox bleach or the house brand at Safeway?

The body copy continues, “The Clorox Company is providing funding to support tree planting efforts around the state. For more information about California oaks, go to www.californiaoaks.org.”

So, then, Clorox pays the Oakland nonprofit called the California Oak Foundation to plant California oaks around the Golden State?

Not so fast. The California Oak Foundation is not a tree-planting charity, it’s an environmental advocacy group. I checked the Foundation’s website and 990s (tax returns) and it doesn’t appear that Clorox makes donations, at least for tree planting, to the California Oak Foundation.

This ad is all legerdemain.

Like David Copperfield to look at The Clorox Company you’d think there’d be some money there. And there is. The Clorox Company made $5.44 billion last year. Its market cap is $8.49 billion and its EBITDA was $1.29 billion.

But just as you won’t figure out how David Copperfield makes the Statue of Liberty disappear by watching more closely the distracting sleight of hand, this ad won’t tell you anything about how The Clorox Company really “saves trees.”

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...

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...

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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