Respecting Your Cause Marketing Partner

From Freschetta, the bake-at-home pizza brand found in your grocer’s freezer case, comes a pink ribbon cause marketing campaign that seems slightly ashamed of its esteemed non-profit partner.

Here’s the campaign: when you buy pink-beribboned packages of Freschetta pizza products and Schwan Food Company, the brand's owner, will donate $1 up to $50,000 total to guess who?

You almost have to guess because the type is so small in this FSI (Free-Standing Insert) you might not be able to read it without the help of artificial magnification. It's only slightly better on Freschetta's website, which requires an extra click behind the mention of the campaign on the home page to find out who it benefits.

In fact, with the aid of magnification and good strong light, I can report that the ad says the donation is headed towards Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, one of the most respected hospitals and cancer research facilities in the world.

Maybe Schwan is concerned that Memorial Sloan-Kettering is a fly-by-night outfit.

In fact, the hospital had its founding in 1884 when John Astor and other robber barons of the era threw in a few nickels. Fifteen years later Memorial Sloan-Kettering was substantially funded by John D. Rockefeller. It’s named for the two donors that funded the SKI cancer research center in the 1940s, Alfred P. Sloan, the legendary CEO of General Motors and Charles Kettering, another GM executive.

Schwan Food Company could hardly find a more established and venerable partner for Freschetta.

So why so little respect of its nonprofit partner from Schwan?

One possibility, of course, is that Memorial Sloan-Kettering asked Schwan to go low-key in this promotion.

But barring that, what could possess the sponsor from shouting about their partnership from the rooftops?

Tip of the hat to Kate in Louisville.

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