Cause Marketing to Raise Awareness

Not all cause-related marketing is about raising money, per se. Sometimes it’s about the charity's messaging.

Pictured are images from a box of Hamburger Helper from the Alden Keene Cause Marketing Database that was purchased in 2008. Prominently featured on the front and back of the box is Susan G. Komen’s ‘Pink for the Cure’ campaign.

And while the front makes it clear that General Mills is donating $2 million to Susan G. Komen, it’s not clear that this is a transactional cause marketing campaign. That is, it’s hard to tell if my purchase of this box triggered a donation.

But the back of the box suggests that this is about raising awareness more than raising money.

At the bottom Komen lists “3 ways to help protect yourself.”

Get a mammogram.
Get a clinical breast exam.
Learn how to do a self-examination.

Nothing earth-shattering here. This has been Komen's basic message for coming up on 30 years. But like the saying goes, sometimes it’s better to be reminded of something we already know than to learn something new.

Furthermore, while these recommendations may be old hat for 50-year-old women, every year there’s a new crop of 20-year-olds who may not have heard the message yet.

And a box of Hamburger Helper is a good place to put that message since mom is still the person most likely to prepare the family meal.

How many moms got that message?

I couldn’t find out what kind of unit volume Hamburger Helper does, but in 2008 General Mills’ meals division, which is dominated by Hamburger Helper, did about $1.8 billion a year in sales.

For the sake of argument let’s say that half of that amount or $900 million came from Hamburger Helper sales. Let’s also assume that General Mills makes the same amount of Hamburger Helper every week. At an average retail price of $2.69 per box they would make 334 million packages of Hamburger Helper a year, or 6.4 million units a week.

If they put the S.G. Komen messaging on just one week’s worth of Hamburger Helper boxes, that’s pretty good exposure by itself.

This campaign is head and shoulders better than just the charity’s logo on package. Could General Mills have done more? Probably not on the box itself. Komen got some valuable real estate here.

But nowadays General Mills could easily bridge the printed packaging and the digital world by adding a QR code. The code could point a shoppers smart phone to a Facebook page, a microsite, open a video or picture, send someone to a sweepstakes sign-up page, or even launch some kind augmented reality.

For example, the QR code could have opened up a video that demonstrates how to do the self-exam.

I expect that the ever-sophisticated Komen organization would want to collect contact information, so launching the user’s Facebook account or collecting similar information via a sweepstakes promotion would be ideal.

But do enough Hamburger Helper buyers have smart phones for such an extension to make sense?

I don’t know for sure who buys Hamburger Helper, but a Pew study released last week found that about 1/3 of adults in the U.S. own smart phones but the penetration was even higher among Hispanics, Blacks and people whose household income is north of $75,000.

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...

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-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...

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