Cause Marketing

AVEX water bottles have a handy water spout that keeps out the grit and dirt and can be activated with one hand. In this second video interview from the 2013 Winter Outdoor Retailer trade show in Salt Lake City, I talk with AVEX’s Brand Ambassador Neil Bradshaw about how this product feature figured into their decision about which charity to support when it came time to do some cause marketing. As with yesterday’s interview with Bearpaw marketing VP Randy McKinley, AVEX found its cause marketing partner close at hand. But proximity just made the meetings easier. Watch now as Bradshaw explains how the cause’s mission and appeal sealed the deal for AVEX.

The Outdoor Retailer Show increasingly features a lot of cause marketing. You can always find a lot of very visible ‘big cause marketing’ at the trade show, which took place in January 2013 in Salt Lake City. But in my fifth time at the biannual trade show I went looking for small efforts; cause marketing that’s just being tried out. And I asked them how they found their cause partners and what they hoped to accomplish. Today, a conversation with Randy McKinley, VP of marketing at Bearpaw, a boot company, that turned over the canvas of its shoes to young art students. Watch and listen as Randy describes how the promotion developed and what Bearpaw’s expectations are going forward.

Kind Readers: Shawn T. from San Diego, California is the latest to join the Causemarketing.biz Google Newsgroup. It couldn’t be easier to subscribe. Simply send me your name and your email address to aldenkeene at gmail dot com. When you subscribe each new post comes directly to your email, usually every business day. And like Shawn, when you join I’ll also send you a PDF copy of the "Five Flavors of Cause Marketing" which explains Cause Marketing in an easy-to-follow matrix that includes examples. It's a great brainstorming tool and helps ensure that your campaign has all the components appropriate for the flavor of Cause Marketing you’re considering. Rest assured that I will never sell your name or contact information. So join today. Warm regards, Paul Jones Aldenkeene at gmail dot com

Liberty Bottleworks fabricates rugged water bottles in brand-new factory in Yakima, Washington of recycled aluminum and using America-made machinery. Liberty is the only company making metal water bottles in America today. While that sinks in a little consider that Liberty also has a strong cause marketing component with its partner Big City Mountaineers (BCM), a Denver nonprofit that gives urban kids a wilderness experience that often proves to be life-changing. The night before my interview with Alex Strickland of Liberty at the 2012 Outdoor Retailer trade show in Salt Lake City the company hosted a beer bash that raised $2000 for BCM. During the Summer Outdoor Retailer show in August 2011, Liberty released a bottle featuring BCM's logo which benefited the nonprofit. This year the BCM benefit bottle (at left) was designed by Yakima graffiti artist Bernardo Boeragor. Liberty pledges to do a new benefit bottle for BCM every year. The company also produces a series of bottles impr...

Kind Readers: William F. from Tampa, Florida is the latest to join the Cause Marketing Google Newsgroup. It couldn’t be easier to subscribe. Simply send me your name and your email address to aldenkeene at gmail dot com. When you subscribe each new post comes directly to your email, usually every business day. And like William, when you subscribe I’ll also send you a PDF copy of the "Five Flavors of Cause Marketing" which explains Cause Marketing in an easy-to-follow matrix that includes examples. It's a great brainstorming tool and helps ensure that your campaign has all the components appropriate for that flavor of Cause Marketing. Rest assured that I will never sell your name or contact information. So join today. Warm regards, Paul Aldenkeene at gmail dot com

Over the last few years I’ve profiled about a dozen or so variations on a theme of ‘Buy One Give One’ (BOGO). But at the Outdoor Retailer Show that wrapped up Saturday, August 6, 2011 I found a new favorite. Footwear company Oboz , which is a contraction of the words Outside-Bozeman specializes in shoes and boots true to its Montana roots. Their BOGO cause marketing is a straightforward and appealing; buy a pair of Oboz and the company will plant a tree. What’s unusual is the benefiting cause, called Trees for the Future. Headquartered in Silver Spring, Maryland, Trees for the Future thinks of trees much the same way that Heifer International thinks about domesticated animals; that is, as a provider of wealth for people in the developing world. Trees for the Future plants trees that can become a source of wealth to local families. Think about it, in addition to the environmental benefits of trees they also provide fruits and nuts, fuel, sap, windbreaks, shade, fertilizer, f...

Starting today in my fair city is the Outdoor Retailer Summer Market, the trade show of the $10.85 billion Outdoor Industry Association. About 25,000 vendors, exhibitors, attendees and the media are expected. But only one person will be at the show covering cause marketing and corporate social responsibility campaigns and efforts by manufactures and retailers, and that’s yours truly. I’ll snag interviews, get comments and talk to leaders about how they’re using cause marketing to give them strategic advantage in the growing outdoor industry. Then I’ll post them on the blog and at Twitter for you to read and watch. Follow me here on the blog. My Twitter handle is @paulrjones. My hashtag for the event is #ORcausemarketing. Finally, if there's question you have for anyone in the industry about cause marketing or corporate social responsibility, send them to on Twitter and I'll try and track them down.

Since the start of the year I’ve been beating the drum pretty hard for sponsors and causes to utilize QR codes in their cause marketing campaigns. Read previous posts on the topic here , here , here and here . QR codes are like barcodes, only because they’re in 2D they can hold much more data. You can use QR codes to launch a website or Facebook, display augmented reality, launch a picture or a video, plus many other tactical variations. Here’s tactical implementation that I just proposed to a prospective client that has a physical storefront: put a QR code on a vinyl cling on the clients windows and doors that would launch a sweepstakes entry form. Since basically every smartphone with a camera can read QR codes… and their expense is relatively low…adding them to all your cause marketing collateral makes a lot of sense. The QR code at the left is for me and my company, Alden Keene & Associates, Inc. Point your smartphone at it and it will launch a profile page on a new website ca...

One of the things my company, Alden Keene, does is match nonprofits and sponsors, a service clients pay handsomely for. Here’s a freebie for Ball jars, which sells food preserving jars and equipment, and Grow Appalachia, which teaches the people of rural Kentucky how to grow, cook and preserve their own food. According to the website, Grow Appalachia, formed under the auspices of Berea College… a nonsectarian Christian college in Berea, Kentucky… has several pressing goals: “Basic diet-related health concerns – obesity, diabetes, heart disease." "Limited availability of high-quality fresh produce." "Generational loss of knowledge of gardening, cooking, and food preservation skills." "Widespread economic dependency and lack of autonomy.” The program has one year under its belt. There were 400 people enrolled, 2,800 people fed, 60 tons of food grown at a cost of $1.25 a pound. Startup funds for Grow Appalachia came from billionaire John Paul DeJoria, wh...

The graphic at left is a Venn diagram that describes cause marketing relationships between the usual three stakeholders; cause, company/brand and the consumer. Keep in mind that most cause marketing faces the consumer. While cause marketing can work when only two of the three circles intersect, there's a sweet spot when all three intersect. In such instances the cause marketing becomes 'painless.' We use the diagram to find the sweet spot of cause marketing for our clients at Alden Keene. There are several ways to place brands (cause or corporate) in the Venn diagram. You can just survey internal audiences at either the cause or the company/brand. That's the least expensive and also the least effective. You can also use certain focus groups/ qualitative efforts like sorts and the like and get close. But the best results come using a proprietary 48-question qualitative survey. Naturally, that's also the most expensive option. Finally, a note of explanation about the...

Alden Keene & Associates got its annual renewable energy report the other day from our electric utility, Rocky Mountain Power. In December 2008 we signed up with ‘Blue Sky,’ a wind-energy offsets program, so as to help lessen the environmental impact of Causemarketing.biz. At left is the statement for the last 12 months. The back of the statement is below. Last time around the statement included a bulleted list of the positive effects of the program, customized to Alden Keene. This year Rocky Mountain Power gave the list a little extra graphical punch and with it more relevance in my view. I think there’s a lesson here for cause marketers. Even if such customization isn’t usually possible for most cause marketing campaigns, cause marketers need to report back campaign results. Such reporting builds transparency and as I posted earlier this month… “Transparency is vital to cause marketing. And part of transparency is to report back on how it all went. Such reporting reassures suppo...

This paper icon… which I purchased for $1 at Bashas’, an Arizona grocery chain… made it very clear to me that charities doing paper icon cause marketing campaigns are going to need to differentiate or risk being commoditized out of existence by the retailers themselves. The full-color icon benefits a new orangutan enclosure at the Phoenix Zoo. The icon is 5½” x 8½” and was sitting on the checkout counter. I couldn’t see any hanging in the store in Mesa, Arizona where I bought it or any other kind of collateral material explaining the campaign. Nor did the clerk try to “sell” me the icon or amplify any aspect of the campaign. The back of the paper icon was blank. But I was impressed that the icon featured the beneficiary, a cute little orangutan. Too many charities are still selling sneakers and balloons and shamrocks even though their beneficiaries are adorable little human children. Bashas’, which has done paper icon campaigns for other charities, seems to have learned some lessons in...

For about eight years now I’ve been collecting all the cause marketing I come across in a database, mainly expressed as advertising creative. Alden Keene and Associates now has a database of more than 1,500 cause marketing examples. The problem, of course, is that while I probably see more cause marketing than the average person on the street, even with RSS feeds and Google Alerts, I almost certainly miss more than I see. Moreover, since I'm in North America and only speak/read English, no doubt there's much more cause marketing that I wouldn't even recognize as such. So I propose to set up a Wiki of examples of cause marketing that would be open to everyone. Could be links, could be images or descriptions, or some combination thereof. If this sounds like something you’d like to participate in please email me at aldenkeene [at] gmail [dot] com.

Hi Gang: What follows is my 9-15-2009 presentation to the Crossroads Conference, the annual conference of Utah state chapter of the Society for Human Resource Management. Warm regards, Paul How Corporate Citizenship Can Help HR Build a Better Workforce View more presentations from Alden Keene and Associates, Inc. .

Hi Gang: I was quoted at length in the current issue of Utah CEO Magazine on the topic of cause marketing in the story called Capitalists for Change . Double kudos to the reporter Geoff Griffin, the writer. I must have given the poor devil 100 pages of reports, surveys and the like to sort through.    You have to register to read the full article , but registration is free. ~Paul~

Just got the window cling so now it’s official. Alden Keene and the Cause Marketing blog now are 'powered' by the wind. That is, Alden Keene has purchased enough wind-generated offsets in a program called Blue Sky from Rocky Mountain Power to power our offices and the servers for this blog.

Dear Kind Readers: Last week I got the most inventive word of mouth marketing approach that has crossed my desk in some time. It’s for a new green enterprise and it includes a $40,000 ‘green’ kitchen giveaway and a $1,000 bribe…er... incentive . Intrigued? So was I. Here’s what it’s about. Foodservicewarehouse.com is giving away a $40,000 green commercial kitchen in order to promote its new green certification process, its green kitchen consulting services, and the green kitchen products it sells. Enter the contest here . Here’s the inducement. To the website or blog that refers the winner, they are offering $1,000. Sort of like the referral fee that goes to stores that sell a winning lottery ticket. I’m going to play along and encourage you to enter if you qualify . You’ll notice that I’ve also added a little URL snippet to the column at the right that will be there until they notify the winner in December 2008. If I win the $1,000 referral fee I’ll give it to an environmental cause,...

About five years ago I was tasked with finding a national children’s charity that was well-managed, well-regarded, and necessary. It had to meet a number of stringent standards of effectiveness in achieving its mission and demonstrate efficient stewardship of its resources. It also had to have a good name and ‘heart.’ That is, even given all those data-driven measures, it also had to be a charity with genuine emotional appeal. I found all that and more in the Children’s Organ Transplant Association (COTA) in Bloomington, Indiana. I flew to Indiana for a meeting and to my delight discovered an organization led and staffed by pleasant, honorable people. It was a little like going to the Grand Canyon for the splendid views and finding a Michelin 3-star restaurant there. As a consultant I’ve never done work for COTA. But when anyone asks me to recommend a top-notch children’s charity, I tell them about COTA with the fervor of an evangelist. It really is a terrific charity. Now I’m please...

In the last few months I’ve added brazen mercantilism to the cause-related marketing blog; Google Ads, Amazon, and now a “ Lemonade Stand ” with products for informal learners, which I write about on my other blog at The Learner's Guild . None of these blatantly commercial efforts, however, really lend themselves to cause-related marketing. So in the next few weeks the blog will also feature aprons, cutting boards, mousepads, sweatshirts, and… as required by law in more than 87 countries…T-shirts. All showcasing several cheeky versions of the Alden Keene & Associates logo above. On the occasion of my 250th post I’m pleased to announce that when you buy any merchandise item with the Alden Keene logo, Alden Keene will donate $1.50 to the Children’s Organ Transplant Association (COTA). There is no upper limit on the donation and the campaign will continue until Sept 2009. COTA is an effective, honorable, and well-run charity that helps kids get life-saving organ transplants. We a...

Kind Readers: Tarek from Washington D.C. is the latest person to join the Cause-Related Marketing Googlegroup. You can join, too. When you do, each new posting to Cause-Related Marketing comes directly to your email box. As an inducement, everyone that joins receives a copy of the "Five Flavors of Cause-Related Marketing," which explains Cause-Related Marketing in an easy-to-follow matrix and includes examples. It's a great brainstorming tool and helps ensure that your campaign has all the bells and whistles appropriate for that flavor of Cause-Related Marketing. To join, simply send your name, your email address, city and country to aldenkeeneatgmail.com. The city and country thing helps me know for whom I'm writing. Your privacy is important to me, so be assured that I will never sell your name or contact information to any third party. Warm regards, Paul Jones Alden Keene & Associates, Inc.