Cause Marketing and Co-Branding

Remember when your geometry teacher told you that 'all squares were rectangles, but not all rectangles are squares'? Well, get ready for a similar mind-bender from cause marketing; all cause marketing is co-branding, but not all co-branding is cause marketing.

Dictionary.com defines co-branding as a "marketing effort or partnership between companies to join forces and use the best technology or content of each and lending both of their brands to the final product."

That sounds a little highfalutin. So let's just say that co-branding describes when brands combine efforts in ways such that they create mutual benefit.

There are several kinds of co-branding, including cause marketing itself.

Promotional/Sponsorship. This is the category cause marketing falls under. Another example is Fedex’s league-wide sponsorship of the National Football League.
Ingredient. A recipe in a free-standing insert that includes Hershey chocolate bar and Kraft Marshmallows or Nabisco’s Honey Maid graham crackers.
Innovation Based. Polar Electro’s heart rate monitors integrated into apparel from Adidas.
Value-Chain, which is meant to bring new experiences to the consumer, not just another flavor. There are three varieties of value-chain co-branding

Product Service. Sea World and Southwest Airlines.
Supplier-Retailer. Starbucks wifi service from AT&T.
Alliance. They obvious example are the tie-ups between two or more airline carriers.

Co-branding is common and familiar enough that you probably have some other examples in mind.

Less common is co-branding between more than two brands. That's because the more brands you add the more inertia there is to overcome. Co-branding with more than two brands is like a trade between three or more professional sports teams whereby six or eight or ten players change teams. Those deals frequently make the news because everyone understands that they're so hard to put together in a way that satisfies all the parties.

The above promotion found in the Alden Keene Cause Marketing Database is an example of a four-way co-brand; there’s Tag Heuer, the Natural Resources Defense Council, Leonardo DiCaprio, and a Tag Heuer dealer called Joseph-Anthony. I saw this cause marketing activation in an issue of Forbes magazine.

The cause marketing part of this co-branding is that Tag Heuer delivers an unstated donation to the Natural Resources Defense Council, a cause which given his green bona fides was almost certainly Leonardo DiCaprio’s choice.

In exchange, Tag Heuer gets to use DiCaprio’s mug in the ad. Joseph-Anthony likely gets to pay for part of the ad.

The result of this four-way co-brand is probably satisfaction all around.

Joseph-Anthony is happy because there’s no way a small jeweler could have pulled this together in and of itself. DiCaprio’s pleased because he gets a fee for both himself and a favored charity. And, I assume, the Tag Heuer watch of his choice. The Natural Resources Defense Council is glad to be associated with a higher-end corporate brand with no apparent environmental blemishes, while also getting paid. And Tag Heuer satisfies both a dealer and one of the biggest movie stars on the planet.

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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