Susan G. Komen for the Cure, Still an Active Cause Marketer

In the immediate aftermath of Susan G. Komen for the Cure’s silly public missteps with Planned Parenthood (and KFC before that), a lot of pundits read the tea leaves and foresaw corporate defections from Komen’s sponsor list and public excoriation.

So much for all that.

On April 5, 2012 Komen and Caribou Coffee announced a deal whereby Komen would be the beneficiary of Amy’s Blend, a coffee blend names for former Caribou roastmaster Amy Erickson, who succumbed to breast cancer after a lengthy battle. Komen is also the partner in Amy’s Gardens, three gardens that celebrate Erickson’s valiant fight.

With 450 stores, Caribou is the second-largest coffee house chain in the United States, after the much, much larger Starbucks.

Caribou inked the deal despite the fact that there are anti-Komen websites, scholars whose careers hinge on being anti-Komen, an anti-Komen documentary movie, and a half-dozen of so direct competitors.

Komen absorbs the blows from all these brickbats and more and keeps on growing. (Although you wouldn’t have guessed from the way Komen was portrayed as the Goliath in the blowup that the breast cancer charity is not even half the size of Planned Parenthood).

Is Komen immune to any and all criticisms? Of course not. It’s just has a bigger store of goodwill than has been required by their several gaffes, perceived and real.

Add to that the fact that what Komen does is needed by the community of breast cancer fighters and survivors and you have a kind of replay in miniature of what happened to the United Way of America 20 years ago.

In February 1992 William Aramony resigned as CEO of United Way of America amid allegations of a lavish lifestyle funded by United Way monies. Aramony was subsequently convicted on 23 counts of fraud and other illegal acts. He spent 6 years in prison.

How is this like Komen in any way, shape or form?

Well, ask yourself these questions: Was United Way shaken by the scandal? You bet. Shaken to its very core. Before his fall, Aramony was a very capable operator. Has United Way suffered long-time ill effects from the Aramony scandal? It looks to me like its growth curve did. Although I’m not enough of a statistician to say if it was the Aramony scandal that did it or the concurrent transformation of the American economy that left the United Way with fewer large company payrolls to fundraise amongst. So was United Way done in by the Aramony Scandal? Not by a long shot.

United Way remains viable because goodwill for local United Ways is still high and because the substitutes for the United Way are only slightly better now than they were 20 years ago.

The opinions of its haters notwithstanding, Komen has only been tagged by these several dustups, not bruised. Komen remains well-positioned for the future.

Certainly that’s what Caribou Coffee is saying.

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

Why Even Absurd Cause-Related Marketing Has its Place

Buy a Bikini, Help Cure Cancer New York City (small-d) fashion designer Shoshonna Lonstein Gruss may have one of the more absurd cause-related marketing campaigns I’ve come across lately. When you buy the bikini or girls one-piece swimsuit at Bergdorf-Goodman in New York shown at the left all sales “proceeds” benefit Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center . Look past the weak ‘ proceeds ’ language, which I always decry, and think for a moment about the incongruities of the sales of swimsuits benefiting the legendary Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. Cancer has nothing to do swimming or swimsuits or summering in The Hamptons for that matter. And it’s not clear from her website why Shoshanna, the comely lass who once adorned the arm of comedian Jerry Seinfeld, has chosen the esteemed cancer center to bestow her gifts, although a web search shows that she’s supported its events for years. Lesser critics would say that the ridiculousness of it all is a sign that cause-related marketing is

A Clever Cause Marketing Campaign from Snickers and Feeding America

Back in August I bought this cause-marketed Snickers bar during my fourth trip of the day to Home Depot. (Is it even possible to do home repairs and take care of all your needs with just one trip to Home Depot / Lowes ?) Here’s how it works: Snickers is donating the cost of 2.5 million meals to Feeding America, the nation’s leading hunger-relief charity. On the inside of the wrapper is a code. Text that code to 45495… or enter it at snickers.com… and Snickers will donate the cost of one meal to Feeding America, up to one million additional meals. The Feeding America website says that each dollar you donate provides seven meals. So Snickers donation might be something like $500,000. But I like that Snickers quantified its donations in terms of meals made available, rather than dollars. That’s much more concrete. It doesn’t hurt that 3.5 million is a much bigger number than $500,000. I also like the way they structured the donation. By guaranteeing 2.5 million meals, the risk of a poor

Cause Marketing

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