Reporting Back and Giving Thanks is Vital in Cause Marketing

Before Christmas I posted on the efforts of a local grocery chain benefiting local food banks and utilizing their proprietary paper icon.

Yesterday, February 1, 2011, the chain, called Fresh Markets, reported their results in their weekly circular. In a small rectangle about mid-way down on the right side of the circular, Fresh Markets says it was able to donate $98,000 to local food banks. Whether this included any cash, matching, or in-kind donations from Fresh Markets isn’t clear from this page.

The Alden Keene Cause Marketing Database has thousands of examples of cause marketing ‘activations,’ but the folder labeled ‘Thank You Ads’ is notably thin. I just don’t see many examples of sponsors or causes thanking supporters for their help.

This is a major mistake for both causes and sponsors.

Transparency is vital to cause marketing. And part of transparency is to report back how it all went. Such reporting reassures supporters that whatever effort they took helped in some way.

(Fresh Markets could have taken the extra step of figuring out how many meals or how many families were helped with that $98,000. But in just announcing the dollar results they went further than 99% of their peers.)

More than that reciprocity demands that people be thanked for their effort, even if it has to come as a collective thanks and even if the gift was just $1. Plus, because cause marketing can be so in-your-face, you risk donor-fatigue even though the donation amounts are small. Continually asking without reporting back makes it seem like the baby bird whose mouth is always wide open and squawking for more. Causes must pause to thank their supporters, even when the support comes in $1 at a time.

Sponsors and causes must bake these “here’s what happened and thank you for your help” communications into the budget, otherwise it will never happen. In the case of the Fresh Markets circular, the marginal cost of added that little notice is very low.

But the thank you ad at the left cost Volvic money. It ran on the back cover of Scientific American magazine. But I'd argue that it was money will spent.

Finally, it’s in the best interests of causes and sponsors to take the opportunity to keep the conversation alive with their customers and supporters. It's a legitimate potential touch point. And thanking them for their help and reporting back the campaign’s results is a no-nonsense way to do so.

Comments

Part 2: How Chili's Used Cause-Related Marketing to Raise $8.2 million for St. Jude

[Bloggers Note: In this second half of this post I discuss the nuts and bolts of how Chili's motivates support from its employees and managers and how St. Jude 'activates' support from Chili's. Read the first half here.] How does St. Jude motivate support from Chili’s front line employees and management alike? They call it ‘activation’ and they do so by the following: They share stories of St. Jude patients who were sick and got better thanks to the services they received at the hospital. Two stories in particular are personal for Chili’s staff. A Chili’s bartender in El Dorado Hills, California named Jeff Eagles has a younger brother who was treated at St. Jude. In both 2005 and 2006 Eagles was the campaign’s biggest individual fundraiser. John Griffin, a manager at the Chili’s in Conway, Arkansas had an infant daughter who was treated for retinoblastoma at St. Jude. They drew on the support Doug Brooks… the president and CEO of Brinker International, Chili’s parent co...

Cause-Related Marketing with Customer Receipts

Walgreens and JDRF Right now at Walgreens…the giant pharmacy and retail store chain with more than 5,800 stores in the United States and Puerto Rico… they’re selling $1 paper icons for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF). This is an annual campaign and I bought one to gauge how it’s changed over the years. (Short list… they don’t do the shoe as a die cut anymore; the paper icon is now an 8¾ x 4¼ rectangle. Another interesting change; one side is now in Spanish). The icon has a bar code and Jacob, the clerk, scanned it and handed me a receipt as we finished the transaction. At the bottom was an 800-number keyed to a customer satisfaction survey. Dial the number, answer some questions and you’re entered into a drawing for $10,000 between now and the end of September 2007. I don’t know what their response rate is, but the $10,000 amount suggests that it’s pretty low. Taco Bell’s survey gives out $1,000 per week. At a regional seafood restaurant they give me a code that garner...

An Interview with Cause-Related Marketing Pioneer Jerry Welsh

Jerry Welsh is the closest thing cause marketing has to a father. In 1983 after a number of regional cause-related marketing efforts, Welsh, who was then executive vice president of worldwide marketing and communications at American Express looked out his window in lower Manhattan at the Statue of Liberty. The Statue was then undergoing a major refurnishing, and in a flash Welsh determined to undertake the first modern national cause marketing campaign. I say modern because almost 100 years before in January 1885, the Statue of Liberty was sitting around in crates in New York warehouses because the organization building the pedestal ran out of money. And so Joseph Pulitzer, the publisher of the newspaper called The World , proposed a very grassroots solution reminiscent in its own way to Welsh’s cause-related marketing. Pulitzer ran an editorial promising he would print the name of everyone who donated even a penny. Sure enough pennies, along with dimes and nickels, quarters a...

Cause Marketing

Search This Blog