Skip to main content

Made in America Cause Marketing

Liberty Bottleworks fabricates rugged water bottles in brand-new factory in Yakima, Washington of recycled aluminum and using America-made machinery. Liberty is the only company making metal water bottles in America today.

While that sinks in a little consider that Liberty also has a strong cause marketing component with its partner Big City Mountaineers (BCM), a Denver nonprofit that gives urban kids a wilderness experience that often proves to be life-changing.

The night before my interview with Alex Strickland of Liberty at the 2012 Outdoor Retailer trade show in Salt Lake City the company hosted a beer bash that raised $2000 for BCM.

During the Summer Outdoor Retailer show in August 2011, Liberty released a bottle featuring BCM's logo which benefited the nonprofit. This year the BCM benefit bottle (at left) was designed by Yakima graffiti artist Bernardo Boeragor.

Liberty pledges to do a new benefit bottle for BCM every year.

The company also produces a series of bottles imprinted with topographic maps. For each topo bottle sold, Liberty gives 1% of the profits to the Conservation Alliance.

Art and design is a big part of the appeal of the Liberty bottles. And because the company has a proprietary printing process that allows it print directly on the bottle, they can do designs no one else can. Boeragor's BCM bottle, for instance, has a cool raised texture that’s eye-catching and impossible not to touch.

Smart design. Cool art. A strong desire to help causes and Made in America of recycled materials. Liberty Bottleworks gets it.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

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...