Consistency in Cause Marketing

I opened up the Alden Keene cause marketing database and set the dial to ‘way back.’ This ad from KitchenAid benefiting Susan G. Komen is from Sunset magazine in October 2002, the year most of today’s third graders were born and a just a year after KitchenAid started its sponsorship of Komen!

There’s a few things that have changed. But many more that haven’t. Let’s analyze the changes and similarities one by one.
  1. The most obvious change is Komen’s name and logo. In 2002 Susan G. Komen for the Cure was still using its old silhouette logo and name.
  2. Unchanged is Komen’s use of the ribbon, now in its 25th year.
  3. The 9-cup pink-colored KitchenAid stand mixer, model KSM150PSPK is still available. Full retail price of the mixer is $299.99. It’s hard to find independent confirmation, but I believe that’s the same price KitchenAid charged for the KSM150PSPK in 2002. Other pink KitchenAid countertop appliances that generate smaller donations include a blender, food chopper, and food processor, among others.
  4. Cookforthecure.com is still up and selling other pink KitchenAid merchandise like spatulas, pink silicone cake pans, kitchen timers and the like. The website says that Cook for the Cure has generated more than $7 million for Komen since 2001. The guaranteed minimum donation in 2010 is $350,000
  5. The $50 donation to Komen when you buy the pink stand mixer and register it with KitchenAid is also still in place.
So with all this consistency is Cook for the Cure going stale?

Of course the risk is always there. But KitchenAid frequently adds new pink products to the mix. There’s new promotional elements. In 2007 they did a promotion with celebrity chef Jacques Pepin. In 2008 they did a pass the plate promotion whereby anytime someone passed on a special pink ribbon plate and registered online a $5 donation was triggered.

This year the promotion was called 1,000 Cooks for the Cure and it integrated both Pepin and the pass the plate element into a kind of home-party fundraiser for foodies benefiting Komen, and empowered by Facebook and Twitter. It's clever and true to the program's name 'Cook for the Cure!'

If KitchenAid and Komen can keep the surrounding promotions fresh, then the base effort with the pink KitchenAid items probably doesn’t need to vary much.

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