Effectively Communicating What Your Cause Really Does

Typically, charities are better at asking for help than they are at demonstrating success at their mission. That’s why I was heartened by this ad from Save the Children.

Only the savviest of a charity's supporters understand what their charities do in a specific way.

We all know that food bank puts food on the shelves, that nonprofit hospitals treat sick people, that aid charities help people in extremis, and that pet rescue charities move pets out of bad situations.

But knowing a food bank’s mission doesn’t exactly clue you into how important logistics are to them. Aid charities succeed or fail based in part on the quality of personal relationships with local officials. All the good things a hospital does can be erased if it can’t also rein in infections.

With GoodGoes.org Save the Children effectively communicates what saving children looks like at the ground level in the developing world.

In effect it’s a kind of blog, with posts from Save the Children health workers in a half dozen countries on four continents. Here’s a post from Madalitso Masa, who, along with her husband works with about 100 families in Malawi in east Africa:

“Many vaccinations took place this week as we welcomed three beautiful, healthy newborns into my community. What joy! Building trust takes time. But after so many healthy newborns were delivered, many of the communities have embraced me and expressed their confidence in my abilities. It is wonderful to have a job where I can improve the well-being of others through my work and learn about their different cultures, customs, and values.”

The posts are all undated and in English and allow comments. There are photos of the workers and their charges, a short biography, and a kind of scorecard of the work they did over the last month. Madalitso, for instance, treated 2 children for diarrhea, 4 for malaria, vaccinated 11, and made 6 newborn baby house visits.

It wasn’t clear to me whether these stats were for April 2011 or just a snapshot of what she generally does. Still, this is on-the-ground charity work made concrete.

I’d be surprised to learn that all the featured health workers write English, although in Malawi English is one of the official languages. Still I suspect that a lot of language and cultural translation took place in order to keep these posts up to date. GoodGoes.org looks pretty straight forward, but it’s a safe bet that because of distance and language hundreds of staff-hours go into making it look so.

Of course this is also a fundraising effort. You can donate right at the website. But it’s not primarily about raising money. Instead, with GoodGoes.org Save the Children is telling you why you would want to donate.

I greatly admire what Save the Children has done here.

Most domestic charities could do the same, if more easily.

Imagine, a pet rescue charity, for instance, live-blogging the rescue of pets from the flooded areas along the Mississippi River, for instance. Or a food bank following one item of food a week; from the moment when it's donated, to the transportation and warehousing it undergoes, to the point where it lands in the home of the family where it will be consumed.

It's fair to say that Save the Children, which takes in nearly $450 million a year, is better staffed for communications like this than the average food bank. But someone could do everything I've just suggested with a flip camera, a digital camera, and a notebook.

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