Cause Marketing Your Bowl Game

Two of the 35 bowl games held this season… the Kraft Fight Hunger Bowl and the Bell Helicopter Armed Forces Bowl… overtly use cause marketing to appeal to fans.

In the United States the college football season basically ends the first week in December. The bowl games are a series of post-season contests featuring teams that don’t normally play one another. The Armed Forces Bowl, which airs at noon today (ET), for instance, pits BYU against Tulsa, which have played against each other just seven times.

Bowl games are festive, even indulgent affairs. Team members and coaches get the full VIP treatment. There’s plenty of food, marching bands, pep rallies, cheerleaders and in a handful of cases, parades. At the Armed Forces Bowl the cheerleaders and mascots pay a visit to the Cook Children’s Hospital.

The Armed Forces Bowl is meant to call attention to members of the military, present and past, active duty and reserves. “The Dallas-Fort Worth based bowl game has featured a military theme since 2006,” press notes say. “Patriotic overtones recognizing all five branches of the military are prevalent throughout the game. Past Bell Helicopter Armed Forces Bowls have included fan-fest areas showcasing military hardware; flyovers; demonstrations by several of the military’s top skydiving teams; on-field induction ceremonies; military bands and honor guards; and the awarding of the annual "Great American Patriot Award" (GAPA) presented by Armed Forces Insurance."

At today’s game the honoree at halftime will be Salvatore Giunta, a Congressional Medal of Honor recipient, one of only 85 currently living.

Bell Helicopter is a brand of Textron, a defense contractor and aircraft manufacturer.

Kraft has been promoting the Kraft Fight Hunger Bowl, which airs Dec. 31., as a culmination of its efforts on behalf of Feeding America. On Tuesday, Dec. 27, Kraft announced at press event that it was donating more than 25 million meals to Feeding America. Last year, the first for Kraft’s sponsorship of the bowl, the company donated 21 million meals.

Starting in August, Kraft drew on a number of football greats along with celebrity chefs Pat and Gina Neely, whose faces graced a number of ads during the course of the season. That's them at the left in an ad from People magazine.

“To further support the mission of the bowl,” promotional materials say, “organizers are donating a meal for every ticket sold, as well as in the name of every player participating in the game. Players and coaches from the University of Illinois and UCLA also plan to volunteer at Bay Area food pantries on Friday.”

Of the two, the Kraft Fight Hunger Bowl is much better marketed, and more of a pure-play cause marketing effort. That’s probably because ESPN owns the Armed Forces Bowl and treats it like just another media property. By contrast the San Francisco Bowl Game Association owns the Kraft Fight Hunger Bowl and appears to have turned over all the marketing to Kraft.

It’s a clever use of a bowl game, by Kraft. But they do walk a sponsorship tightrope here.

The Kraft Fight Hunger Bowl is at best a second tier bowl game. That’s why they could so fully take over the marketing. By the same token, in most years it features teams with mediocre records. This year’s contest pits Illinois, which is 6-6, against UCLA which at 6-7 has a losing record! So on game day itself, Kraft is marketing to a pretty small TV audience in a baseball stadium (AT&T Park in San Francisco) whose capacity is just 40,184.

Of course, neither contest is the first to mashup a bowl game with a cause. That honor goes to the East-West Shrine Game, an all-star game that features college seniors and benefits Shriner’s Hospitals for Children. The East-West Shrine Game debuted in 1925!

The next game takes place on January 21, 2012 and sponsorships are still available.

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