Cause Marketing

I’m always a little bit chary of the many contests that offer a donation to charities that get the most votes, or Likes, or pageviews, or Tweets. Pepsi Refresh and American Express Members Project are prominent, but hardly the only examples of these kinds of Crowd-Sourced Cause Marketing promotions. Maxwell House, a coffee brand from Kraft, does its own version of this Crowd-Sourced Cause Marketing called Drops of Good in partnership with the cause Rebuilding Together. My problem is that such promotions so often become beg-a-thons, and pathetic ones at that. Since promotional money is always tight, only a relatively small handful of humble supplicants ever get funded. After 2.1 million votes, Maxwell House’s top grant was $10,000, which it gave to five communities. Another five got $5,000. And because of the winners-take-all approach of most of these promotions, a charity that gets even a few hundred less votes than the finalists is basically out of luck with nary a consolation priz...