Skip to main content

Cause Marketing That’s a Little Flat

Buy this special Strawberry Crème chocolate bar from Ritter Sport and when you do, you’ll help Alfred Ritter GmbH & Co. make a $100,000 to The Leslie Simon Breast Care and Cytodiagnosis Center.

I bought this 100 gram bar from a floor-standing point of sale display. The coupon below was attached to the top of the display unit.

I had to look up The Leslie Simon Breast Care and Cytodiagnosis Center, but it’s a unit of the Englewood Hospital and Medical Center in Englewood, New Jersey, which is across the Hudson from Manhattan Island. I don’t know Englewood Hospital and Medical Center from Moses, but it is an affiliate of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, which is a respected name.

According to Ritter Sport’s U.S. website, the campaign was launched on October 1, 2010. But by the time I bought the chocolate bar at a neighborhood grocer on November 9, 2010, the display, which was one of those self-liquidating units, was still almost full. I'd bet that I bought the third of fourth bar sold out of an estimated 50 bars in the display.

That’s the challenge of being a specialty brand in a crowded marketplace like chocolate. Even though it’s a premium brand, in the United States Ritter Sport probably has to rely on a second-tier distribution network. Moreover, the display wasn’t exactly in prime real estate in the store where I bought it.

Worse, the display didn’t exactly tell the breast cancer story. It was mostly just pink ribbons and stacks of strawberry creme Ritter Sport bars.

I have an architect friend who, when he sees a building that is interesting looking but ultimately a failure, will try to soften the blow by saying without sarcasm or irony, "nice try."

I'm glad a respected German brand is cause marketing with an American cause. Like my architect friend says, nice try.

But between a promotion that wasn’t exactly timely on the ground, a charity that is almost obscure (the pink ribbon notwithstanding), a display that was underwhelming and poorly placed, this cause marketing promotion falls a little flat.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Three Ways to Be Charitable

I’ve spent a big chunk of my career working with or for charities. Many of my dearest and ablest friends are in the charity ‘space.’ And the creativity and problem-solving coming out of the nonprofit sector has never been greater.  Although I’ve had numerous nonprofit clients over the last decade or so, I haven’t worked in a charity for about 12 years now, which gives me a certain distance. Distance lends perspective and consequently, I get a lot of people asking me which charities I recommend for donations of money or time. My usual answer is, “it depends.” “On what?” they respond. “On what you want from your charitable activities,” I reply. It sounds like a weaselly consultant kind of an answer, but bear with me for a moment. The English word charity comes from the Latin word caritas and means “from the heart,” implying a voluntary act. Caritas is the same root word for cherish. The Jews come at charity from a different direction. The Hebrew word that is usually rendered as charity is t…
Post a Comment
Read more

Top Eight Cause-Related Marketing Campaigns of 2007

Yeah, You Read it Right. It's a Top 8 List.

More cause-related marketing campaigns are unveiled every day across the world than I review in a year at the cause-related marketing blog. And, frankly, I don’t see very many campaigns from outside North America. So I won’t pretend that my annual list of the top cause-related marketing campaigns is exhaustive.

But, like any other self-respecting blogger, I won’t let my superficial purview stop me from drawing my own tortured conclusions!

So… cue the drumroll (and the dismissive snickers)… without further ado, here is my list of the eight best cause-related marketing campaigns of 2007.

My list of the worst cause-related marketing campaigns of 2007 follows on Thursday.


Chilis and St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital
I was delighted by the scope of Chilis’ campaign for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. As you walked in you saw the servers adorned in black co-branded shirts. Other elements included message points on the Chilis beverage coas…
Post a Comment
Read more

Unconventional Metrics of Cause Marketing Power

The printed edition of Fortune Magazine runs a regular feature called ‘My Metric’ wherein business leaders identify informal but telling measures of current economic activity.

In the January 17, 2011 Michael Glimcher, CEO of Glimcher Realty Trust cited as his metric an increased number of black cars on the streets of New York City as a sign of the U.S. economy’s (still pending?) resurgence.

That got me thinking, what unconventional metrics evidence the power of certain cause marketing efforts?

One immediately leapt to mind, although only General Mills, which makes Yoplait yogurt in the U.S., can measure it.

The Yoplait lid at left... which I purchased in December 2010... can NOT be redeemed for a $0.10 donation to Susan G. Komen for the Cure. Instead it promotes Yoplait’s sponsorship of Komen’s Race for the Cure events, which are numerous.

But I’d bet you a six-pack of Yoplait Greek Honey Vanilla that people nonetheless still send in some number of the lids above in an attempt to redeem th…
Post a Comment
Read more