Cause Marketing You Can Sew Believe In

Cecily Eastwood of Oxfordshire, England was teaching school in Kitwe, Zambia when, just a few months into her gap year, the 19-year-old was tragically killed in a road accident.

In her memory, her parents established Cecily’s Fund, a registered charity which works to support the education of children orphaned by AIDS in and around Kitwe.

In support of the nonprofit called American Friends of Cecily’s Fund, the February 2010 issue of the magazine Sew News invited readers to sew and embroider grocery-store style totes according to a pattern provided online, and then send them to the charity’s US operations to be sold as a fundraiser. (Sew News does a charitable campaign like this yearly. In 2011 they're asking readers to sew lap quilts to benefit the Alzheimer's Association.)

I can imagine buying a handmade tote like this for my wife or daughters.

The goal was to create 1,000 totes. I couldn’t find any word on whether or not they hit their mark.

My heart loves this simple grassroots cause marketing effort, so emblematic of what’s right in this world. The people that participate have talent, fabric, a sewing machine, and time, and they give of themselves in a way that that is genuine, earnest, and wonderfully noncommercial.

There’s hope for a world that has people who sit down at their sewing tables to sew little acts of love like these totes.

But my head swims at the thought of 1,000 or so people sewing and then spending $4-$5 to ship their totes so that it could sell for, what, $20? I can imagine some that won’t sell at all. For that matter I can’t imagine how they will sell any of them.

The website of American Friends of Cecily’s Fund doesn’t have the horsepower to describe and display pictures of 1,000 totes. You certainly wouldn’t want to commoditize the totes by treating them as though they were interchangeable. After all, the point of the exercise is that the totes are all handmade and hand-decorated. One of the things Sew News called on readers to do was sew or embroider by hand Cecily’s Fund's simple logo on the tote.

Does American Friends of Cecily’s Fund sell the bags at arts and crafts fairs? If so they’d almost certainly have to pay a fee along with a percentage of the gross sales, cutting into the donation amount. They might get the totes in retail, but they'd have to give up half the retail price to the store. Plus, outside of the context of the cause, people probably wouldn't pay as much.

Maybe they sell them at American Friends of Cecily’s Fund events. But 1,000 bags would be quite a few for a small cause to swallow and liquidate even over the course of a year.

My heart wants to love this authentic and heartfelt effort. My head just won’t let it. So I’ll have to be satisfied by saying thank God for the good and decent people of this people world who respond to appeals like this.

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...

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