Cause Marketing

Paul Fidrych left a promising career at Nike to start a business with his wife that takes old bike inner tubes and upcycles them into useful things like dog collars, chew toys and water dishes. All while benefiting the Humane Society chapter in Portland. The company is cleverly named Cycle Dog . To me that business model sounded like the much-heralded company TerraCycle, which upcycles juice pouches, for instance, into brightly-colored messenger bags. When I suggested that analogy, Paul politely told me that Cycle Dog positions itself as the leading US recycled pet supply company. Cycle Dog is laser-focused on the pet market. Listen now to this interview with Paul at the 2012 Outdoor Retailer Show in Salt Lake City as he talks about Cycle Dog's products, how they keep inner tubes out of the landfill, how they benefit the Humane Society, and how to crack open a cold one with man’s best friend.

Faithful readers: Waiting for your computer to return from the shop after a motherboard-ectomy is a little like waiting at the hospital for a baby to come…it can’t get here soon enough! But the computer doctors are telling me no later than Saturday! In the meantime, I’m reprinting a column I wrote for the Salt Lake Enterprise, the local weekly business newspaper, and which was published Monday, March 16, 2009. The headlines tell the story in brief: “American Red Cross running low on corporate donations” –ABC4, Feb. 16, 2009 “Donations way down at charitable organizations” –KSL, Nov. 23, 2008 “Big players scale back charitable donations” –Wall Street Journal, Nov. 25, 2008 “Donations down; need up” –The Intelligencer, Nov. 30, 2008 The recession has been a perfect storm for nonprofits, battering them with great service needs at a time when donations are markedly lower. And corporate donations, which most years range from 4-6 percent of the total U.S. charitable giving according to Givin...

Lately one of the great things about the Cause-Related Marketing blog for me is that I don’t have to go out and ‘enterprise’ my blog posts the way I did in the early days. People have started to pitch me ideas to post on. We have a name for these people. When they send helpful pitches that are pertinent to this blog I call them PR angels. When they pitch me ideas that are off-topic, over-long, just plain dumb, or addressed to “Dear Alden,” I just call them idiots. (I think it’s clear from reading the blog that my name is Paul Jones. My company’s name is Alden Keene.) And I’m not talking about spam here either. Everybody on earth with an email account gets spam. Editors and reporters have started to out the idiots. Heck, even PR people are outing the idiots. It's very chic to complain about PR idiots right now, and who am I to resist a trend? I’m not going to out any idiot PR people by name. Although I reserve all rights to do so in the future. But to prove my point, here is a sho...

My boutique marketing agency... Alden Keene & Associates... is about to get some more competition, this time from IBM. They will officially release the following press release later today. Don't feel like you can afford IBM? You're probably right. So if you're in need of cutting-edge marketing from someone ask.com called "a veteran of the cause-marketing wars," contact me Paul Jones, at aldenkeene[at]gmail[dot]com. And ask for the 'Big Blue Special'. FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE New IBM Consulting Offerings Help Clients Be Greener, More Ethical: Improving Corporate Social Responsibility Can Grow Revenue, Market Share SOMERS, NY -- 30 June 2008: New IBM (NYSE:IBM) consulting offerings can help clients understand and improve their societal impact – from carbon management to labor practices – increasing their competitive position and appeal to consumers and other interested parties. “Operating a business ethically and environmentally is not only a requirement to...