Cause Marketing

'Girlfriends for Folate' from the March of Dimes aims to encourage women of reproductive age to take a daily supplement of 400mcg of folic acid so as to prevent certain kinds of birth defects in any children they might bear, and to make donations to the cause and/or participate in its annual walk. The campaign is sponsored by Bayer and features a celebrity component, a sweepstakes element, and is tied directly to the March of Dimes' March for Babies, which takes place the weekend of April 30, 2011. So far so good. The problem is that everything doesn’t quite come together. The ad, from May 2011 issue of Lucky magazine, mentions a celebrity, but not the name, which is a waste. Girlfriendsforfolate.com , a Facebook page, lists the celebrity as Vanessa Minnillo, the TV personality who is currently engaged to singer Nick Lachey . Meanwhile, the ad in Lucky asks you to donate to the cause. But while you could sign up for the walk on the Facebook page, so far as I could tell t...

You ever go to a fancy gala and read the program with all the awkward sponsor announcements in the back? You know: “The Investment Counselors at Second Fidelity and Trust Congratulate Sumner Redstone as the First Children’s 2010 Father of the Year and Wish Him Every Success!” That’s kind of what’s at work in this ad from the inflight magazine called Delta Sky . The magazine had a special feature on Pittsburgh and in that feature was this ad from Bayer , which has its North American headquarters there. On June 5, Pittsburgh hosted the United Nation’s event World Environment Day , and Bayer and its foundation, along with other Pittsburgh corporate mainstays like Alcoa and Heinz , were among the sponsors. But look at the visual. There’s a shirtless boy gratefully drinking clean water straight from the spigot, a spigot which has that fat, ragged-looking weld that suggests ‘developing world.’ It’s a really splendid picture. When I saw it, that visual told me that Bayer was doing some kind ...