Skip to main content

Cause Marketing the Auto Shows

It’s prime auto show season right now across the country. The two biggest shows, the Detroit auto show is going on right now, while the Chicago show is coming up in early February. My home state’s much more modest show took place last weekend.

(At left is a Subaru, which offers its own cause marketing effort called Share the Love.)

All of which begs the question, how might auto shows utilize cause marketing in their promotional mix?

Here’s a few ideas:

Imagine a Rosy the Riveter kind of look with messaging that says, in effect, "Let's put the State/Region back to work."

Then in partnership with local micro-lenders when someone gets approved for a micro-loan during the promotional period, they are also entered into a drawing for a truck/car for their business from the car show’s sponsoring dealer’s association.

The drawing, of course, would take place during the car show in front of a lot of cameras.

If you really wanted to doll it up, you could present it as a version of those reality talent shows, like ‘Dancing With the Stars’ and let attendees vote on the winners using Facebook and Twitter.

You could even invest it with all that cooked-up drama that’s so typical of those shows: “Amanda Peterson the judges liked your business plan and operational moxie. But Auto Show attendees were more reticent” …dramatic pause! … “still, you’re safe from elimination.”

How many vehicles would be given away? It could be just one new car or truck. Or, it could be some combination of new/used vehicles such that there was at least one winner per county, or some other meaningful number.

Other likely partners might include banks and credit unions and one (or more) of the small business incubators in the State, and of course media outlets like a TV station, radio stations and newspapers.

The positioning is this: the State's car dealers are so invested in the State that they want to help small businesses lead the State's recovery.

New businesses, after all, are the engine of job growth in the American economy.

And the kind of businesses that apply for loans from micro-lenders or seek help from incubators are the smallest of the small, and, thereby, almost romantic. Everybody loves to hate big businesses after all. But a small startup is almost like a child in that in the abstract it’s all but immune to criticism.

Micro-lenders typically require a business plan and meet extensively with would-be borrowers to help them succeed.

Also, I'd suggest one 'male' business and one 'female' business, since while owning a business is aspirational for both genders, it's different for women than for men.

And vice versa.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Top Eight Cause-Related Marketing Campaigns of 2007

Yeah, You Read it Right. It's a Top 8 List.

More cause-related marketing campaigns are unveiled every day across the world than I review in a year at the cause-related marketing blog. And, frankly, I don’t see very many campaigns from outside North America. So I won’t pretend that my annual list of the top cause-related marketing campaigns is exhaustive.

But, like any other self-respecting blogger, I won’t let my superficial purview stop me from drawing my own tortured conclusions!

So… cue the drumroll (and the dismissive snickers)… without further ado, here is my list of the eight best cause-related marketing campaigns of 2007.

My list of the worst cause-related marketing campaigns of 2007 follows on Thursday.


Chilis and St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital
I was delighted by the scope of Chilis’ campaign for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. As you walked in you saw the servers adorned in black co-branded shirts. Other elements included message points on the Chilis beverage coas…
Post a Comment
Read more

Cause-Related Marketing Meets Microfinance

Kiva.org and Advanta.com Mix it Up

You’d have had to have been in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia the last year or so to have missed the run up of microfinance. Between 2004 and 2006 more than $4 billion of capital flowed into microfinance institutions. All told experts say the total loan microfinance loan portfolio may be as much as $12.5 billion. And of course the father of microfinance, Muhammad Yunus won the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize. Microfinance is now so respectable, so effective, (so profitable!) that it’s already enjoying its first global backlash.

Actually that first sentence is hyperbole. Because even in Ulaanbaatar… far from almost anywhere on the vast, frigid steppes of Mongolia… microfinance is thriving such that the earliest recipients of micro loans there are now complaining about taxes and government bureaucracy! And May 29-31, 2008 the Conference of Microfinance Institutions will convene in Ulaanbaatar, the eleventh such annual conference.
Now Advanta, a credit card issuer to small…
2 comments
Read more

Cause Marketing Beer with BOGO, Brew One Give One

On Monday’s post I touched on the topic of telling people what your cause marketing campaign accomplished when completed. I’ve recommended this approach to clients as a way to keep open the lines of communication with customers and clients and to get extra value from the campaign.

In other words, you’ll want to hold back some of the promotion’s budget to continue to activate the effort until the very end.

But what if that really cuts across the grain in your organization? What if it’s just not in your corporate DNA to do anything but to frontload your cause marketing activation? Well, then, add the report back to the activation of your next cause marketing effort.

New Belgium Brewing of Ft. Collins, Colorado, said to be the seventh largest brewery in the United States, did just that with this ad in Sunset magazine. I found this ad in the Alden Keene Cause Marketing Database.

New Belgium donates $1 for every barrel it brews and sells. It’s a BOGO cause marketing effort, Buy One Give One. …
Post a Comment
Read more