Good Cause Marketing Lessons From Bad PR

Causemarketing.biz, this humble little site you’re reading right now, is the Interweb’s largest, most diverse and comprehensive blog on cause marketing.

Maybe the site's size and renown explains the volume of off-topic pitches I get from well-meaning PR people.

There’s a name for these people. When they send me helpful pitches that are pertinent to causemarketing.biz I call them PR angels. When they pitch me ideas that are off-topic, too long, too dumb, or addressed to “Dear Alden,” I just call them clueless.

Editors and reporters have started to out the clueless. Heck, even PR people are outing the clueless. It's never been more chic than right now to complain about PR idiots.

I’m not going to out any clueless PR people by name. Not today anyway. But to prove my point, here is a short list of subject lines that have appeared in my in-box in the last week:

“Text Messaging: a Marketers Paradise for Increasing Brand Engagement.”

“Sales and Marketing Team: The Real Drivers Behind iPad Implementation.”

What comes after Kony 2012?

And a personal favorite from a few years back:

“BOARDFEST SNOWBOARD RAIL JAM GOES COED FOR BLIZZARD AT THE BEACH.” And yes, it shouted at me just like that in all-caps.

There are lessons in all this for all cause marketers, but especially for those from the nonprofit world.

Don’t Just ‘Doorbell-Ditch’ Your Cause Marketing Proposals. When I was an adolescent I was known to have doorbell-ditched from time to time. You know, where you ring the doorbell on a home and then run? The lesson is, don’t just email your proposal to someone you’ve had no contact with. Don’t spam prospects with your proposal. They have to be addressed to someone. And that person must agree to receive it before you send it off.
Consider Scale and Appropriateness. If your cause is a model railway museum in Fiddler’s Bend, Oklahoma you’re almost certainly barking up the wrong tree to propose a CRM campaign to American Express. That’s not to say that all successful cause marketing relationships are purely strategic. But very few of them are openly stupid.
Style Counts. In terms of the format of your proposal no type should be smaller than about 20 points. Don’t use Comic Sans or other wacky fonts or weirdly-colored type. And the deck can’t be more than 20 pages max unless you’re author/consultant Tom Peters. In which case you’re allowed 22 pages. If it’s on paper or Powerpoint; use the landscape format. Use pictures, and plenty of them. But make sure they’re dynamite and that they illustrate your cause and the campaign as well as possible.
If the Answer is No Measure Carefully Any Response. Think very hard before you fire back something venomous if all you get in response is a form letter. Maybe only a juggernaut like St. Jude Children’s Research Medical Center could get away with such a response. For everyone else, remember that cause marketing is a marathon, not a 100-meter dash. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. You attract more with flies with honey than vinegar. (Insert the morale-building cliché of your choice here.)

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...

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