Asics GT-1000 PR for Christina Applegate’s Right Action for Women

If a sponsor is going to cap a donation at a certain maximum amount, what’s the right minimum amount to donate?

In this campaign, which benefits Right Action for Women - The Christina Applegate Foundation, Asics has put out a special pink running shoe with black satin laces and the iconic pink ribbon embroidered on the heel collar. During October, $2 from the sale of each shoe sold benefits The Christina Applegate Foundation, with a maximum donation of $100,000.

Actress Christina Applegate is a breast cancer survivor. The shoes retail on Amazon for $90.

So what should the minimum donation be?

Way back in the day we’d structure these kinds of deals so that there’d be no mention of a minimum donation. After all, the sponsors would be on the hook and we didn’t want to scotch a deal by committing them to a minimum amount. Plus, we were pretty confident that we’d never really get less than $250,000 out of campaigns like this.

In time, as cause marketing became more accepted, we started adding minimum donation amounts to contracts and promotional copy. Minimum donations reflect better on the company, because to consumers they represent a guaranteed donation.

So then the question becomes, how much spread should there be between the minimum and the maximum?

In this case, Asics probably made a limited production run of these GT-1000 PRs. They’re probably happy to run out of stock, but they don’t want send 25,000 people away disappointed and empty-handed. The maximum donation, therefore, was probably determined in part by the size of the production run.

And what determined the size of the production run? I’d guess it was a matter of estimates about how many they could sell.

So, how high to set the minimum donation? Part of that calculus has to include things like budgets, projected sales, projections of remaindered or discounted stock, etc.

But Asics also has to weigh how they want to be perceived by their customers, because, again, the higher the minimum the more it seems like a guarantee.

In this case, Asics set the minimum at $75,000.

Comments

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...

Cause Marketing

Search This Blog