The Cause Marketing Post in Which I Invoke Both God and Andrew Carnegie

There’s a famous longitudinal study which found that children from homes where one or both parents were college educated would, by age four, have heard 32 million more words than would their peers from families who were on welfare. The quality and tone of the words in the homes with professional parents was also higher and more positive in nature.

A more recent study in the United Kingdom turned up very similar results.

Another influential paper called ‘Matthew Effects in Reading,’ found that early success in reading built on itself, while children that didn’t learn to read early were more likely to have trouble acquiring new skills later in life.

The author, Keith Stanovich, called it the ‘Matthew Effect,’ after Matthew 25:29 in the New Testament: “For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath.”

Reading and literacy track closely with long-term success in life. That is, the Matthew Effect describes a positive feedback loop as well.

Another study finds that middle-class families have an average of 13 books per child, while in low-income neighborhoods the ratio is just one age-appropriate book per 300 children!

Cause marketing can’t do much about the number or the quality of words said in a home. But it can do something about age-appropriate books available to poor kids.

This awareness-raising cause marketing message from Homewood Suites, which increasingly targets the family leisure travel segment, and represents a natural tie for its Lewis the Duck children’s book series. Homewood Suites’ logo features a duck. To date, Homewood Suites has donated more than 5 million books to needy kids and built and maintained 60 lending libraries in poor neighborhoods. Homewood’s nonprofit partner is BooksforKids.org.

Building libraries, expanding literacy and giving books to children is God’s work, if I may be so bold. America’s first real philanthropist, Andrew Carnegie, funded some 2500 libraries between 1883 and 1929 in the United States, Canada, the UK, Australia, and New Zealand. My own father-in-law grew up in a small town reading in a Carnegie Library.

In the United States, most of the Carnegie Libraries became, in time, public libraries supported with public funds. It’s fair to say that the traditional high rates of literacy in America and the Commonwealth countries is due in part to the Carnegie Libraries.

Three Cheers, then, for Homewood Suites for taking up the mantle of this important work. Because when it comes to literacy and reading the Matthew Effect needs to live on.

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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...

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

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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...

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