Skip to main content

Cause Marketing the Slightly Arcane

We all get cause marketing based on food and other consumables. But is cause marketing out of reach if the product you sell is a little on the esoteric side? What charity do you partner with and what is the shape of that partnership? How do you make sure your brand is really served by your sponsorship?

These and other questions came to me as I read a press release announcing Celestron’s sponsorship of the nonprofit Astronomers Without Borders (AWB).

Celestron is the world’s largest telescope maker, with a special emphasis on selling telescopes to serious amateur astronomers. Astronomers Without Borders seeks to promote “understanding and peaceful international relations, while also supporting outreach and education in astronomy.”

I don’t want to oversell the obscurity of telescopes. Astronomy and telescopes aren’t exactly invisible to the wider world. This isn’t Olympic badminton, after all.  

By the same token, amateur astronomy is not like the NBA or even the NHL in terms of public popularity.

Celestron’s sponsorship involves giving new telescopes to Astronomers Without Borders’ educational outreach efforts and other unspecified support. What might that look like? AWB is currently trying to fund a culturally-specific astronomy education project for schoolchildren in Afghanistan on indiegogo.com.

Celestron’s donated telescopes and other support will likely aid efforts like that.

In terms of the sponsorship with AWB and Celestron seem kind of new to this. AWB just plasters Celestron’s logo big and loud on its website, but with almost no context. Celestron’s internal search engine finds no mention of the AWB partnership. And the press release I read was full of vague generalities about what the sponsorship will do. They’d be well served by tightening that down a little.

But the wider lesson for the rest of us that sponsorship and cause marketing holds possibility and promise even for causes and sponsors that aren’t exactly household names.

(At left is an artist's conception of NASA's new Mars Science Laboratory, due to land on the red planet on Sunday, May 5, 2012).

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Part 2: How Chili's Used Cause-Related Marketing to Raise $8.2 million for St. Jude

[Bloggers Note: In this second half of this post I discuss the nuts and bolts of how Chili's motivates support from its employees and managers and how St. Jude 'activates' support from Chili's. Read the first half here.] How does St. Jude motivate support from Chili’s front line employees and management alike? They call it ‘activation’ and they do so by the following: They share stories of St. Jude patients who were sick and got better thanks to the services they received at the hospital. Two stories in particular are personal for Chili’s staff. A Chili’s bartender in El Dorado Hills, California named Jeff Eagles has a younger brother who was treated at St. Jude. In both 2005 and 2006 Eagles was the campaign’s biggest individual fundraiser. John Griffin, a manager at the Chili’s in Conway, Arkansas had an infant daughter who was treated for retinoblastoma at St. Jude. They drew on the support Doug Brooks… the president and CEO of Brinker International, Chili’s parent co...

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...

Cause-Related Marketing with Customer Receipts

Walgreens and JDRF Right now at Walgreens…the giant pharmacy and retail store chain with more than 5,800 stores in the United States and Puerto Rico… they’re selling $1 paper icons for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF). This is an annual campaign and I bought one to gauge how it’s changed over the years. (Short list… they don’t do the shoe as a die cut anymore; the paper icon is now an 8¾ x 4¼ rectangle. Another interesting change; one side is now in Spanish). The icon has a bar code and Jacob, the clerk, scanned it and handed me a receipt as we finished the transaction. At the bottom was an 800-number keyed to a customer satisfaction survey. Dial the number, answer some questions and you’re entered into a drawing for $10,000 between now and the end of September 2007. I don’t know what their response rate is, but the $10,000 amount suggests that it’s pretty low. Taco Bell’s survey gives out $1,000 per week. At a regional seafood restaurant they give me a code that garner...