Cause Marketing

Mother Love a Duck! What motivates us to merge the interests of causes and companies? Oftentimes the choice is intensely personal. 505 Southwestern , the chile sauce maker, supports Susan G. Komen in memory of the founders’ mother, Stella. Munchkin Inc … which makes innovative products for parents, children and pets… supports Susan G. Komen for similar reasons. Serena Gillespie, the wife of the company’s vice president of marketing, was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2005 at tender age of 31. She had two children under age four at the time. The privately-held company rallied around Serena and her husband Doug Gillespie. But they went a step further and developed a cause-related marketing campaign with two goals. One goal was to raise money for the cause. But the larger goal was to encourage young mothers to get screened for breast cancer. Dubbed Project Pink, the campaign made use of pink bath ducks which were available in stores and online for $2.99. They chose ducks for their double...

Is ‘Any Charity’ As Good as One Charity? My posting about 505 Green Chile Sauce talked about how a company might go about picking a suitable charity to partner with in a cause-related marketing campaign. My posting on Firedog Across America revealed a study which shows that customers respond best to CRM campaigns when causes and companies are well-matched. But what if you’re a bank and have all kinds of different customers who aren’t tightly segmented, but want to try your hand at cause-related marketing? Couldn’t you get away with supporting not just one charity with a cause-related marketing campaign, but ‘any charity?’ Illustrated is an ad for Irwin Union Bank , an Indiana bank with branches in nine states. Here’s the offer: When you open a new certificate of deposit with $10,000 or more, the bank will make a donation of $50 in your name to the charity of your choice. So if you’re fan of Oxfam , Environment Defense , the local homeless shelter, or your church’s missionary work in ...

The 411 on Locating a Cause Right for Your Company Suppose you’re a community-minded company and you’re considering launching a cause-related marketing campaign, but in a world of causes, no cause is much more appealing than the next. Who do you partner with? This question came to me while I was looking at the back of a bottle of 505 Southwestern Organic Green Chile Sauce. 505’s sauces are certified USDA Organic, which means according to 505 Southwestern’s website that it contains at least “95 percent organically produced ingredients.” While the organic seal caught my eye, so too did the little pink ribbon, emblematic in the States of the breast cancer causes. 505 Southwestern gives a “portion of every sale” to the fight against breast cancer. Regular readers know how critical I am of that language. Last year 505 Southwestern generated $35,000 for breast cancer research. Given their sensitivity to organic products, why did 505 Southwestern choose breast cancer for its cause-related ma...