Breast Cancer Awareness Cause Marketing? It’s Still Needed.

I saw this ad in one of the local daily newspapers and groaned audibly. Breast cancer awareness! Really? By now isn’t every person in the developed world who can fog a mirror aware of breast cancer?

Apparently not. And the irony may be that it is the very fittest who are most immune to the message.

No woman sees breast cancer coming. But it’s probably even more true when you’re young, strong, and healthy.

Listen to the breast cancer story of Annabeth Eberle. The elite athlete was a seven-year member of the US National Gymnastics team, a featured performer in the 2006 Touchstone gymnastics movie Stick It and an eight-time All American at the University of Utah. She was diagnosed at age 27.

Eberle was the veritable poster girl for fitness when she noticed one of her breasts was getting smaller. A visit to her doctor brought the bad news.

“When you are young you think no way will this happen to me,” she told the Deseret News. “It really does happen. It helped me to tell her my story and to get it out. I really think that talking about it helps.”

The breast cancer awareness message still needs to be heard, especially by the rising generation.

“I’m not trying to be conceited, but maybe seeing me, people will realize this can happen to anyone, even athletes and you need to go and get checked and be aware of your body,” Eberle told the Salt Lake Tribune. “That is what saved my life.”

After a mastectomy Eberle is currently cancer-free. The University honored Eberle in her fight with a ‘Pink-Out’ during the meet against Arizona State University on Feb. 4, 2011. Everyone who wore pink got free general admission seating. Both teams wore pink and 4,000 Power of Pink t-shirts were handed out to the crowd. The crowd of 12,836 was treated to a number of tribute videos about Eberle.

I like the promotion, but the University of Utah, which has a medical school, could have closed the loop a little better. Mammograms aren’t typically recommended for women as young as Eberle, but the University could have handed out brochures, offered screenings, delivered post-meet lectures and the like.

Comments

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

Why Even Absurd Cause-Related Marketing Has its Place

Buy a Bikini, Help Cure Cancer New York City (small-d) fashion designer Shoshonna Lonstein Gruss may have one of the more absurd cause-related marketing campaigns I’ve come across lately. When you buy the bikini or girls one-piece swimsuit at Bergdorf-Goodman in New York shown at the left all sales “proceeds” benefit Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center . Look past the weak ‘ proceeds ’ language, which I always decry, and think for a moment about the incongruities of the sales of swimsuits benefiting the legendary Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. Cancer has nothing to do swimming or swimsuits or summering in The Hamptons for that matter. And it’s not clear from her website why Shoshanna, the comely lass who once adorned the arm of comedian Jerry Seinfeld, has chosen the esteemed cancer center to bestow her gifts, although a web search shows that she’s supported its events for years. Lesser critics would say that the ridiculousness of it all is a sign that cause-related marketing is

A Clever Cause Marketing Campaign from Snickers and Feeding America

Back in August I bought this cause-marketed Snickers bar during my fourth trip of the day to Home Depot. (Is it even possible to do home repairs and take care of all your needs with just one trip to Home Depot / Lowes ?) Here’s how it works: Snickers is donating the cost of 2.5 million meals to Feeding America, the nation’s leading hunger-relief charity. On the inside of the wrapper is a code. Text that code to 45495… or enter it at snickers.com… and Snickers will donate the cost of one meal to Feeding America, up to one million additional meals. The Feeding America website says that each dollar you donate provides seven meals. So Snickers donation might be something like $500,000. But I like that Snickers quantified its donations in terms of meals made available, rather than dollars. That’s much more concrete. It doesn’t hurt that 3.5 million is a much bigger number than $500,000. I also like the way they structured the donation. By guaranteeing 2.5 million meals, the risk of a poor

Cause Marketing

Search This Blog