Skip to main content

Cause Marketing Lessons From the Rodeo

On July 4, 2012 my family and I attended a small town rodeo and the clown who performed had a great joke with a lesson in it for all cause marketers.

Rodeos in the United States don’t enjoy much TV airtime and so they survive on live events, oftentimes in markets so small that Nielsen and Arbitron wouldn’t recognize them.

Oh, the national championship events in Omaha and Oklahoma City can be seen on high-number cable stations, and occasionally the ‘rodeo game’ as the announcer kept referring to it will sometimes go to a few of the New York City exurbs as a novelty for the city-folks. Still the only way for most people in the densely-populated Eastern Seaboard states to see a rodeo is to travel a good distance.

That’s a pity, too. A well-produced rodeo is a slice of the rural American West in its most piquant form.  If the NFL is steak and potatoes, and NASCAR is BBQ and fried pickles, ProRodeo is a hearty chili with cornbread.

PRC rodeos, even at the level I watched last night, are tightly-formatted and entertaining affairs. There’s Bareback Riding, Steer Wrestling, Team Roping (Heelers and Headers) Saddle Bronc Riding, Tie-Down Roping, Steer Roping and Bull Riding.

(At the left is Cody Teel, from Kountze, Texas, who is currently atop of the money-earning standings for bull riding. He’s astride ‘Due North.’)

And there’s the clown who plays the role of the classic jester, or clever fool, along with an announcer who explains the action and plays straight man to the clown.

Midway through the show the clown starts extolling the charms and beauties of the rodeo queen and her court.

Then he says, setting up the joke: 
“Ladies, I have three words for you that will change your lives forever!”

The announcer bites and says… speaking for everyone… “Oh yeah, what’s that?”

Lower your standards,” says the clown.
The crowd roared.

It’s a great punchline. Fifty more words and it could be the lyrics to a country song from Lady Antebellum! But the lesson for all of us in cause marketing is in the clown’s setup, not his punchline.

If you want to change your cause marketing life forever... and not in a good way... then feel free to lower your standards and shortchange things like transparency and openness. Pick partners that aren’t really interested in a true partnership. Make the promotion hard to understand or to participate in. Don’t give potential supporters a compelling reason to participate and don’t thank them when it’s all said and done. And frontload all the communication into the start of the promotion.

But don’t do any of that unless you’re a cause marketing clown.

Comments

SCD Group said…
Nice post Paul!

Love how you tie the core of a rodeo to the core of cause marketing!

Steve
Paul Jones said…
Thanks, Steve!

Always great to hear from you.

I like the rodeo and I suspect that it has more lessons than those I listed, including holding on for dear life when the ride gets bumpy!

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...