Cause Marketing

Today is the last day of Breast Cancer Awareness Month 2012 and I devote this final pink ribbon post to Project Pink , from Puma, the shoe and apparel company. Project Pink is a contest of the sort made popular American Express’s Member’s Project and Pepsi Refresh. That is, causes nominate themselves to receive a large cash prize then rally their supporters to vote them through the rounds, usually via social media. Beginning on July 6, 2012, Puma accepted nominations for a single prize worth as much as $120,000. The donation was based on the profits from the sale of Project Pink merchandise, mainly branded shorts and t-shirts, and by the number of tweets with a promotional hashtag. Promotion extensions included a celebrity soccer match with actor/singer Ashley Tisdale. Project Pink had a verification phase in September and the voting began on Sept 24 and ended on October 5, 2012. Puma announced the winner earlier this month; the Dr. Susan Love Research Foundation . I never really lik...

Oakley is a really cool brand of sunglasses worn by very cool people. Oakley’s celebrity endorsers include Olympians Oscar Pistorius, Lindsay Vonn and Shaun White. Oakley’s headquarters in Foothill Ranch, California is cool in a Blade Runner kinda way. After he sold the company to Italy’s Luxottica Group, Oakley’s founder, Jim Jannard, went on to start RED Digital Camera, which makes really cool digital cameras used by cool movie-makers . Cool comes off Oakley like snow comes off Shaun White’s snowboard at the top of the halfpipe. So when Oakley decided to do a pair of pink sunglasses, what pink ribbon charity did they choose to partner with? Oakley chose the Young Survival Coalition, whose tagline is, “young women facing breast cancer together.” As I’ve mentioned in this space before, the bell curve of breast cancer diagnoses hovers over women in their fifties and sixties. But, of course, many younger women get their breast cancer diagnosis in their twenties and thirties, in...

Earlier this month the Internet was in high dudgeon… in the way that only the Internet can be… because someone accused Etsy of pink washing. In its Daily Finds newsletter Etsy had bundled together several items with a pink hue in honor of Breast Cancer Awareness Month from its vast web of items. And, the story goes , some of the items had only the loosest sort of connection to breast cancer or breast cancer charities. I swear, sometimes the Internet is such a hothouse environment. It can be like the worst parts of high school. But this momentary blip in the Twitter feed did prompt this idea. Why doesn’t Etsy just bake cause marketing capability right into its API? That is, why doesn’t Etsy offer its shopkeepers the ability to trigger a transactional cause marketing promotion on demand according to terms they set? For example, if you sell flag-themed purses and you want to make $3 donation to the Wounded Warrior Project when people buy your stars and stripes purse in July, Etsy oughta...

Done right, cause marketing can be a terrific branding tool for the cause and the sponsor. But doing it right is the challenge. It’s easy to slap together a transactional cause marketing campaign for some consumable item; a box of Kleenix, a candy bar, a toothbrush. But when a consumer purchases an everyday item, that purchase probably doesn’t connect the cause, the sponsor, and the consumer at a very deep level. No one uses a Zip-Loc bag, which benefits schools through the Boxtops for Education campaign, and thinks about local school kids having better educational outcomes as a result.   As a marketer I don’t have any problem with that kind of imbedded giving that exists at a surface level. But if the sponsor or the cause wants to really build their brand, they’re going to need to add a little extra something. That’s what Sharpie has done in its effort on behalf of the City of Hope’s breast cancer research efforts. During October when you buy pink Sharpie products a donatio...

Jen Dinoia, who dealt with breast cancer in 2010, is no fan of Breast Cancer Awareness Month. "Awareness did nothing for me," as she puts it. Jen Dinoia writes The Dinoia Family blog while running her happily crazy Foreign Service family household. Currently in the U.S., the three kids, two parents & cat are eagerly anticipating a move to Nicaragua in 2013. So here with a different take on Breast Cancer Awareness Month is guest poster Jen Dinoia. I walked into my new favorite coffee shop today,and was hit with the realization that it is once again that time of year. No, not Halloween or Christmas, or even just lovely fall decor... I was lightly slapped with the pink. If you remember from this post, I am not a fan of a certain large corporation (let's face it, that is what they are) that claims they are racing towards a cure (while suing small non-profits that dare to use the word "cure" in a campaign and giving their top dogs rather inflated salaries). I...

Trade groups exist to provide service to their members; research and publications, marketing and branding, lobbying and training, tradeshows and meetings, and the like. And now, one other thing they can do is to enable members to cause market. At least, that’s what the Mushroom Council is doing with a Breast Cancer Awareness Month effort benefiting the cancer research hospital, City of Hope . Wikipedia says there are 7,600 national trade groups in the United States. There are also trade associations at the regional, statewide, and local levels as well. Here’s how the Mushroom Council’s efforts on behalf of City of Hope work: “In total,” the Council has donated more than $800,000 to the City of Hope for “pilot clinical trials to support research on the potential cancer-fighting benefits of mushrooms.” Mushrooms are high in selenium and the City of Hope has identified a potential link between mushrooms and decreased cancer tumor growth in cells and animal tests. The press releas...

From Freschetta, the bake-at-home pizza brand found in your grocer’s freezer case, comes a pink ribbon cause marketing campaign that seems slightly ashamed of its esteemed non-profit partner. Here’s the campaign: when you buy pink-beribboned packages of Freschetta pizza products and Schwan Food Company , the brand's owner, will donate $1 up to $50,000 total to guess who? You almost have to guess because the type is so small in this FSI (Free-Standing Insert) you might not be able to read it without the help of artificial magnification. It's only slightly better on Freschetta's website, which requires an extra click behind the mention of the campaign on the home page to find out who it benefits. In fact, with the aid of magnification and good strong light, I can report that the ad says the donation is headed towards Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, one of the most respected hospitals and cancer research facilities in the world. Maybe Schwan is concerned t...

A friend recently found the paper icon at the left at a bowling alley in metropolitan Salt Lake City, Utah, where I live and asked my opinion. Where to start? There was, my friend said, no indication in the bowling alley of who the benefiting charity is, aside from the pink ribbon, which denotes the fight against breast cancer. Susan G. Komen for the Cure would almost certainly consider the phrase “Bowl for The Cure” a copyright and/or a trademark violation. If this were a Komen campaign it would carry their trademarked version of the pink ribbon. The icon would also be a darn-sight more sophisticated. There’s no identifying marks on the paper icon except the pink ribbon. There’s no explanation on the back of the paper icon; just acres of unused white space. Speaking of size it’s nearly 10-inches high and 4-inches wide at its widest point. It could easily be two-thirds its present size and be just as effective. The paper stock is pretty heavy, I’d say at least 80-pound. It doesn’t nee...

Most retail in America is promotion-driven and tied to seasons and holidays: Christmas, Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Graduation, Back to School, Thanksgiving, New Years, etc. But not every company can promote around all of those seasons. For a chocolate company the main seasons are Christmas, Valentines and Mother’s Day. Many’s the small chocolatier that does banner business in those three seasons and then limps through the rest of the year. (This is true for certain nonprofits as well. There are dozens of nonprofit ballet companies whose fortunes rise and fall for the year depending on how well their annual production of the Nutcracker does each Christmas season). But if a chocolatier… or any other retailer… could add an extra season, well then that could be pretty sweet addition to the bottom line. For National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, Shari’s Berries , which sells hand-dipped strawberries, truffles and the like is offering a number of pink ribbon strawberry pac...

Wednesday morning I had a cup of pink-topped Yoplait Strawberry-Mango yogurt for breakfast. When I mail in that top, along with the others we’ve collected, General Mills will make a $0.10 donation per lid to Susan G. Komen for the Cure. I stopped at my grocer’s deli and picked up a little smoked turkey. The lady at the counter was wearing a pink hat with Komen’s version of the pink ribbon, but like all the versions of the pink ribbon, emblematic of the fight against breast cancer. There was a counter card saying that Boar’s Head deli product supports Komen . Later I was looking for one of those clear film protectors for my phone and I came across a local firm that sells just the thing. Oh, and they’re donating 5% of online sales in October to the Breast Cancer Research Foundation. If I had done all the above on Sunday or Monday instead of Wednesday, I could also have listed the pink ribbons wrapped around the goalposts and players on the NFL games I saw. This is October, National Bre...

It’s National Breast Cancer Awareness Month ... the 25th anniversary!... and stores and the media are flooded with cause marketing for breast cancer research, raising the question: is cause marketing possible for non-breast cancer charities? It seems to me that other cause campaigns are chipping away at the edges of National Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Here are a handful of recent examples, all featuring celebrities as it turns out: Electrolux will donate $1 to the Ovarian Cancer Research Fund this fall when you send a virtual cake to someone. That’s my cake to the left in the OCRF’s trademark turquoise. Frankly the virtual cake didn’t exactly track for me. That is, other than the fact that you can bake a cake in an Electrolux oven, it wasn’t clear to me what one thing had to do with another. As usual, daytime TV diva Kelly Ripa lent her promotional support. Former President Jimmy Carter and First Lady Rosalynn Carter headlined efforts for the UN designated World Habitat Day on M...

On October 23, I posted about Ulta's Windows of Love campaign for the Breast Cancer Reseaerch Foundation. Earlier this week Ulta sent out this recap email to supporters. Thanks to Kate L. for sharing!

Clients ask me all the time: have the breast cancer charities sucked out all the oxygen out of the atmosphere for cause marketing during October? That is, can anyone else do cause marketing during National Breast Cancer Awareness Month? I can't give a categorical answer, but here are three quick takes on cause marketing campaigns going on in this month that aren’t about breast cancer, plus a forth that is about breast cancer, only with fewer pink ribbons than usual. Sigg Drop of Hope Water Bottle for the Jane Goodall Institute . When you buy the Drop of Hope water bottle from Sigg , the Swiss aluminum bottle makers, they’ll donate $5 to the Jane Goodall Institute to build rainwater tanks for schoolchildren in Africa. The campaign is well-timed coming, as it does the heels of news that Sigg used BPA as an element in the plastic liner of its water bottles after first denying doing so. Benihana/Fuji Water Co-Promotion for Best Buddies . Last night at dinner with the fam at Benihana ...

Successful cause marketing appeals not only to your head, but to your heart as well. The head part comes easier for me and probably for many of you as well. So how do you inject heart into a cause marketing campaign? Ulta’s answer is to ask people to write their breast cancer stories in a letter and then post them in the front windows of their stores. They call it 'Windows of Love.' Ulta supports The Breast Cancer Research Foundation. Ulta is the largest discount cosmetics and fragrance retailer in the United States with more than 330 stores in some 38 States. There’s an Ulta store that I can almost coast down to from my house, so I went down there to check it out. The store devoted the better part of three of its four windows to the promotion. One of the window displays explained the promotion and the other two contained actual letters. The letters were unformatted. That is, so near as I could tell they were posted exactly as they were submitted. The challenge was that some of...

In baseball, a bunt is a small hit that goes no farther than the infield. And bunt is what the Prostate Cancer Foundation (PCF) did with this ad that I’ve seen recently in Newsweek and BusinessWeek magazines. The ad’s call to action is that you go online and pledge “as little as” $1 for each home run hit during Major League Baseball play between Thursday, June 11 and Father’s Day, a holiday celebrating fathers that falls on Sunday June 21 this year. Why? Well 186,500 men in the United States are stricken with prostate cancer each year. And, “in the time it takes to play nine innings” nine men die of the disease, about 30,000 men a year. The PCF estimates that 143 home runs are likely to be hit over the 11-day period between June 11 and June 21. But while the body copy says you can pledge as little as $1 per home run, in fact, you can pledge as little as $0.25 cents . While these kinds of scoring-linked promotions are common enough, they’re usually set up so that a sponsor makes a ...

Today, Saturday April 25, 2009, when you go into Macy’s and give $5 to the National Park Foundation, Macy’s will give you $5 off a $15 (or more) purchase and a ‘shopping pass’ that allows you 20 percent off basically anything else in the store. In addition some undefined amount of the money generated will go to ‘local participating organizations that conserve and protect our environment.’ It’s all in celebration of National Park Week , which I was not previously familiar with. The local charitable partner in my market is the Hogle Zoo , a facility and organization that I’ve always found underwhelming. There’s a lot to like here. First off, I like the idea of the National Park Week, although so hard on the heels of Earth Day I don’t know whether or not this is the right week for it. Other nonprofit organizations like heart disease and the breast cancer charities have successfully tread this path before. But it’s not clear to me that the National Park Foundation has the promotional jui...

Mae West famously said that “too much of a good thing is... wonderful.” But is it? A female friend forwarded me a recent ‘moms’ e-newsletter she got about a week ago. It had the expected content but the bottom was lined with four products ‘for the cure;’ shower gel for the cure, a CD with Amy Grant for the cure, fantasy bubble bath for the cure, and a sketchbook for the cure. All offering ‘100 percent of the net proceeds’ for breast cancer research. She made the point that now, near the end of Breast Cancer Awareness Month, she’s a little ‘pinked out.’ I can see her point. In magazines, with their long calendars, the editorial and the advertising for Breast Cancer Awareness Month might start in September or even August. The last notices of breast cancer awareness might appear in November. It’s less true of the electronic media like TV or the Internet, but still that’s as many as four months of pink ribbons. In that time there’s hundreds of events, thousands of pink themed cause-markete...