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At left is a small ad that ran in the back of Golf Digest magazine in October 2009, Breast Cancer Awareness Month. There’s the familiar pink ribbon, emblematic of breast cancer causes. But look closely and you’ll see that the company makes no claims about any charity benefiting from the sale of pink ribbon golf club covers.
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A kind of faux cause marketing with a sense of humor can be seen from AirTran, the discount airline. Both the two-color ads on the left, which ran in the same issue of Sports Illustrated magazine in January 2010, feature two players from the NFL, although neither their teams, nor the NFL, nor even the game of football is explicitly mentioned.
Instead the ads brilliantly lampoon the kind of marketing and fundraising that a lot of nonprofits, especially children’s charities, specialize in; the deadly-earnest appeal.
AirTran turns nonprofit advertising conventions on their head. The players... Atlanta Falcons QB Matt Ryan and Super Bowl 45 bound Green Bay Packer wide receiver Donald Driver... both sport faces that border on the melancholy. The headlines and body copy mimic the solemn-sounding (oftentimes soporific) writing common to fundraising appeals.
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That’s funny!
More than that, I think it’s potentially instructive to people writing appeals for nonprofits. If your copy is as grave and sincere as this ad pretends to be, then part of this satire is directed at you. And rightly so.
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