Skip to main content

Transparency and Thanking Supporters in Cause Marketing

The Alden Keene Cause Marketing Database… my proprietary library of cause marketing ‘activations’…has thousands of examples that go back more than 10 years. But the folder labeled ‘Thank You Ads’ is all but empty. I just don’t see many examples of sponsors or causes thanking supporters for their help after a campaign has ended.

This is a major missed opportunity for both causes and sponsors.

Transparency is vital to cause marketing. And a vital… if mostly ignored… part of transparency is to report back how it all went. Such reporting reassures supporters that whatever effort they took helped in some way.

If in the future most cause marketing campaigns did no more than to announce how much money was raised, they will have done more than what 99 percent of cause marketing campaigns do today.

A better approach would be to announce how the money that was raised was used. If you did a paper icon campaign for a children’s hospital and the campaign generated enough money to buy 50 high-quality neonatal pulse oximeters, then you should issue a press release and notify your social media channels of that fact.

The best approach of all would be to track the results of those 50 pulse oximeters and then tell supporters how they helped in the diagnoses and treatment of actual pediatric patients

This kind of reporting back is demanded by our human need for reciprocity. Even if the donation was just $1, reciprocity demands that people be thanked for their effort, even if it has to come as a collective thanks.

Plus, because cause marketing can be so in-your-face, you risk donor-fatigue even though the donation amounts are small. The cause that continually asks without reporting back makes it seem like the baby bird whose mouth is always wide open and squawking for more.

Charities aren’t sustainable in the same way that businesses are; so they are like baby birds always crying for more. Fundamentally, that’s the way charities are. But causes and charities must pause to thank their supporters, even when the support comes in $1 at a time.

Sponsors and causes must bake these “here’s what happened and thank you for your help” communications into the cause marketing campaign budget, otherwise it will never happen. But that cost needn’t be high, especially when causes and campaigns make use of social media.

Finally, it’s in the best interests of causes and sponsors to take the opportunity to keep the conversation alive with their customers and supporters. Telling people what happened is a perfectly legitimate touch-point. And thanking them for their help and reporting back the campaign’s results is an effective way to keep the relationship active.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

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