Skip to main content

Cause Marketing Valentine's Day

It’s Valentine’s Day, a natural reminder that it's time to get rid of the evidence of someone you once 'liked.'

After all, there's your ex in every other post on your Facebook wall and scattered all throughout your timeline.

What do you do after you’ve moved on but the evidence of your past likes remain? Well, back in the day, Stalin had an army of skilled photo retouchers to call upon when someone fell out of favor. (See some of their handiwork at left)

Today a cheeky New York digital agency named ClearHart launches a new mobile app that will remove all evidence of your ex from your Facebook page faster than you can say ‘Stalinist Purge.’ And 20 percent of the sales of the app benefit the American Heart Association of New York, up to $5,000

Called KillSwitch, the app deletes pictures, videos, and wall posts, and unlikes status updates.

“KillSwitch is not a vindictive tool, so much as an answer to a very natural, pre-existing human behavior,” says ClearHart Co- Founder, Clara de Soto. “After all, how many movies have you  seen of people throwing stuff out or burning pictures post‐breakup?... KillSwitch is just the digital age’s version of that.”

Yeah, but isn’t the cause marketing component just a way to pay off the joke? I put that question directly to Joseph Pineda, whose PR agency, the Carmelita Group, is handling the launch.

“We had a few ideas of charitable partners,” he said, “but picked American Heart Association of NY for a few reasons. It was obviously a great fit for Valentine's Day and the ‘heartbreak’ tie in--but also because it is local to NY (where ClearHart is based) and when we spoke to them they were just a great bunch, and we totally fell in love with them and their mission. February is also ‘Heart Month.’”

Fun!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

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

Why Even Absurd Cause-Related Marketing Has its Place

Buy a Bikini, Help Cure Cancer New York City (small-d) fashion designer Shoshonna Lonstein Gruss may have one of the more absurd cause-related marketing campaigns I’ve come across lately. When you buy the bikini or girls one-piece swimsuit at Bergdorf-Goodman in New York shown at the left all sales “proceeds” benefit Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center . Look past the weak ‘ proceeds ’ language, which I always decry, and think for a moment about the incongruities of the sales of swimsuits benefiting the legendary Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. Cancer has nothing to do swimming or swimsuits or summering in The Hamptons for that matter. And it’s not clear from her website why Shoshanna, the comely lass who once adorned the arm of comedian Jerry Seinfeld, has chosen the esteemed cancer center to bestow her gifts, although a web search shows that she’s supported its events for years. Lesser critics would say that the ridiculousness of it all is a sign that cause-related marketing is

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