Unconnected Cause Marketing

Two cause marketing ads in two separate publications both promote the Make-A-Wish Foundation and are both dated November 29, 2010, and yet other than the logo and the benefiting organization, they are strangely unconnected.

The Make-A-Wish ad appeared in People magazine, promoting Darren, one of their wish kids, along with the organization’s seasonal awareness and fundraising effort called Season of Wishes.

The other is from the inside back two pages of a Macy’s circular promoting the retailer’s ‘Believe’ campaign, which I greatly admire for its breadth and depth. As I’ve confessed before, I’m a sucker for these big involved campaigns because having worked on a few of them, I know what it takes to get them just right.

It’s probably too much to ask Macy’s to coordinate its circulars or other media with Make-A-Wish, but the ad for Make-A-Wish in People… whether they paid for it or not… is commercial advertising. That is, they controlled the content and its placement.

So in a magazine ad like this, why didn’t Make-A-Wish draw a strand of connection at the bottom? Something like: “Look for the Believe campaign, benefiting Make-A-Wish, online and in Macy’s stores now.”

But why would Make-A-Wish want to? After all, nobody expects Coke to use its ads to do much more than share the logo and its slogan de jour. The polar bear ads that run for Coke in the winter don’t refer to the promotions Coke does with NASCAR earlier in the year, for example.

The difference is that while Make-A-Wish is a top-10 brand among its nonprofit peers in terms of brand image, Coke consistently ranks as the number one brand in the world, undergirded by a humungous advertising and promotional budget and nearly 125-years of advertising history.

Make-A-Wish doesn’t have Coke’s advertising budget. But it does have Macy’s spending millions promoting Believe and Make-A-Wish. To my way of thinking, Make-A-Wish simply can’t afford not to reinforce a promotion like Macy’s Believe on those occasions when the nonprofit does advertise.

Comments

Anonymous said…

thank you for sharing with us, I believe this website truly stands out : D.

4/01/2011 8:43 AM

Anonymous said…

This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

7/23/2011 1:19 PM

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

Search This Blog