Cause Marketing Christmas

As a holiday, Christmas is surprisingly challenging to cause market around, but a local homebuilder has the bones of a good campaign based on a gingerbread house-building contest that could be duplicated elsewhere.

Cause marketing is commonly linked to holidays. I’ve even argued in this space that the pink ribbon campaigns offer retailers, in effect, an extra selling season.

But with some notable exceptions, like Christmas benefit albums, the redoubtable Salvation Army bell ringers and a few others, Christmas cause marketing isn’t as common as you might expect.

There’s reasons of course.

Unlike Valentines, to name another holiday selling season, Christmas in the United States is for many still a holy day, notwithstanding all the commercialization. And it tends to be a very busy time with family and friends.

But think of all the potential advantages Christmas holds for cause marketers and fundraisers.

Christmas is a time of giving.
There’s countless potential ‘hooks;’ Santa and his elves, Christmas trees, bells, carols, holly, brass bands, mistletoe, candy canes, reindeer, etc.
It comes at the end of the year when Americans are mindful of tax deductions.

Here’s the gingerbread house campaign in question. Build a gingerbread house patterned after a home model built by Ivory Homes and you could win $1,000 for you and $1,000 for your charity of choice.

The campaign is direct, easy to explain and understand, and appropriate to the sponsor.

I would have recommended that Ivory specified a particular charity to direct the donations to. With a little effort, Ivory could turn the contest deadline into something of an event and charged admission to raise funds for said charity.

As is, the event takes place at the clubhouse of one of its communities, which means they can probably accommodate hundreds of people, but not thousands. Since Ivory is almost certainly trying to attract potential homebuyers to its developments, they could put heated tents onsite to increase capacity.

They should probably also consider divisions for children say 5-8, and 9-12. Imagine a men’s division, even a division for professional chefs and bakers, and a people’s choice award. Ivory could challenge its crews to build gingerbread-style children’s playhouses and then auction them off to benefit the chosen charity.

Ivory has multiple developments, so they might consider some kind of round-robin ‘tournament’ that begin at four or eight developments before culminating at the larger event where the winners would be crowned. The gingerbread houses that get the most fan votes moves on to the next round.

This campaign cries out as well for social media elements.

I think this has a lot of potential and is eminently ‘stealable.’

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...

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