Cause Marketing

Kroger’s Giving Hope a Hand campaign, an anti-breast cancer effort is gaining momentum for much the same reasons that General Mills’ Boxtops for Education and Campbell’s Labels for Education have; it’s opened up the effort to other brands. That is, Giving Hope a Hand… like Campbell’s Labels for Education and General Mills Boxtops for Education… has made the leap from its exclusive relationship with Kroger to including the participation of other brands, including Dannon’s Activa brand of yogurt, Freschetta pizza, Kraft cheese, Pepsi, Purina, Windex, and Ziploc, among others. (Parenthetically, it’s interesting to note that other Dannon brands participate in Labels for Education. Ziploc also participates in Boxtops for Education! Kraft, of course, also does a prominent cause marketing effort on behalf of Feeding America). At the left are the front and back panels of a box of Keebler’s Town House crackers that I saw in December 2011, but which certainly predated that time period. The Keeb...

On the heels of yesterday's post about rebranding the two big label campaigns benefiting education, in today's post I show how when one anti-hunger charity rebranded itself, it doubled in size, while another anti-hunger charity is also growing, if less impressively, under its old branding. The nation’s largest anti-hunger charity, Feeding America , has been knocking it out of the park in terms of its fundraising since its rebranding in September 2008. Here are the numbers: In 2008 it raised $577 million; in 2009 it raised $639 million; in 2010 $706 million; and for fiscal year 2011 it generated $1.2 billion. For those of you keeping score at home, Feeding America has doubled in size since its rebranding, and in the teeth of the worst recession in America in a generation. Share Our Strength , an anti-hunger charity that focuses on children, has also been quickly growing. In 2008 it raised around $14 million (not including results from its subsidiary called Community Wealth Vent...

For some time now the two big prominent label collection efforts, General Mills Boxtops for Education and the much more senior and yet smaller Label’s for Education... founded by Campbell’s... have opened their respective campaigns to non-competing brands. It’s the classic win-win. In so doing, they broaden their exposure and increase the amount of possible funds raised for schools. I suspect Campbell’s and General Mills also broaden their cost structure. Meanwhile, the new partners are happy to participate with either of these well-established efforts because all the groundwork has long since been laid down and because both efforts enjoy strong relationships with tens of thousands of schools nationwide. To get to this point both of the original sponsors have made efforts to erase their names from the efforts. ‘Boxtops’ is no longer named for General Mills. Label’s no longer features Campbell’s name or branding. With all that now behind them one of label campaigns has the opportunity t...

Now through November 11, 2011 participating IGA stores across the United States are offering $0.05 to the Wounded Warrior Project for each case of certain private label food brands sold. This is an echo of a similar effort from participating IGA stores undertook for the Wounded Warrior Project from Memorial Day last May through Labor Day earlier this month. Only instead of private label foods it was for cases of IGA private label water and the donation amount was $0.10 per case. In turn, that seemed influenced by a campaign Kroger did for breast cancer research in October 2010. IGA is a huge buying and distribution cooperative for 5,000 member stores in 40 countries. The Wounded Warrior Project is a nonprofit charity that raises money and awareness for the nation’s injured service members. I became aware of this effort via a news announcement from the IGA in tiny Wendell, North Carolina, east of Raleigh. I’ve been agitating for private label cause marketing in these pages since Nov...

In my wallet are cards and keyfobs for a half-dozen loyalty programs from the sophisticated, like SkyMiles and Marriott Rewards and a couple grocery chains to several no-tech buy 10 get one free punch cards from a bakery and a couple of restaurants. Your wallet or handbag probably holds a similar variety of rewards cards. But is there a potential match between loyalty programs and cause marketing? Marketing superstar Coke, which runs the gigantic MyCokeRewards.com rewards program, has placed its bet. Now to be clear, label redemption efforts from Campbell’s, the Boxtops for Education campaign from General Mills and others are both loyalty and cause marketing programs. But MyCokeRewards was founded as an effort to reward Coke purchasers, not their favored causes. At the left is an ad that ran in the 15 August, 2011 issue of People magazine. Register your school at mycokerewards.com/sprite and it could receive a $25,000 grant to become a ‘Sprite Spark Park.’ Formatted as a ...

In its most recent edition, The Checkout , the publishing outlet for research developed by The Integer Group, asked Americans an intriguing cause marketing question: “When choosing between two companies that each benefit a cause and sell the same product, similar in price and quality, which of the following would influence your preference for one brand over another.” Let’s put some flesh on that. The question asks, in effect, when do you buy Progresso soup and when do buy Campbell’s soup, given that they both benefit education causes? Or when do you buy Yoplait yogurt and when do you buy Dannon yogurt, each of which generates funds for separate breast cancer charities? No surprise, but ‘Personal Relevance of Cause’ was the top answer for both men and women, polling out around 70 percent (the graph was formatted such that exact percentages are hard to determine). The most surprising answer for me was the second most common answer. About 33 percent of men said that “Donates With Every P...

If you’re the kind of person who wishes that every day could be like the first day of spring or that Christmas music would play all year long then has Lee, the apparel maker, got a cause marketing campaign for you. The ad at the left was in the April 2011 issue of women’s magazine Redbook. The next Lee National Denim Day is Friday, October 7, 2011, a full six months from tomorrow. Lee runs these ads…heck, it runs this very ad… about six months out of the year in women's and other magazines. Lee National Denim Day is a fine and well-promoted cause marketing campaign that dates to 1996. In the years since the campaign has generated more than $83 million for breast cancer research. You could hardly do better than to learn the lessons this smart campaign can teach. But to repeat the question in the headline, is it smart to plug a one-day effort year round? There’s actually not many campaigns that run 12 months a year, with Campbell’s Labels for Education, General Mills’ Boxtops for Ed...

There are a handful of big ‘single-element' cause marketing campaigns that have been around for decades, and in their longevity they hold lessons for cause marketers everywhere. Today I'll review four of the very best and discuss what we can learn from them. First some caveats. I'm going to list four campaigns not because there are only four, but because any more than that would make this post unwieldy. Three-fourths of them are North American because frankly, I'm most familiar with them. The fourth... Red Nose Day... is from the UK. That's some of their publicity material on the left If you have examples from somewhere else that should be on this list, by all means leave a comment or email me at aldenkeene @ gmail dot com. I'd love to feature campaigns from other places. Here's how I determined my list. I looked at large-scale campaigns that have been around for at least 10 years, have broad appeal and have raised at least $50 million over their term. I eli...

Like the look and feel of a webpage? Well copyright laws notwithstanding, nothing could be easier to steal. Open the webpage’s source code and there it all is. From a distance it looks like Dannon Yogurt’s newish label campaign benefiting the National Breast Cancer Foundation opened the source code to Yoplait’s longstanding effort for Susan G. Komen for the Cure and just copied and pasted. Both benefit breast cancer charities. The donation amount… $0.10 is the same. The pink ribbons on each are similar, as are the labels in question. The only real difference is that Dannon is redeemed via an online method and Yoplait requires you to mail the labels to a physical address. It seems like a defensive measure on Dannon’s part. In one fell swoop, Dannon made Yoplait’s cause marketing effort slightly generic. Of course, that’s a two-edged sword because it made Dannon’s yogurt cause marketing slightly generic, too. To continue the source code metaphor, there are webpage designers who take sour...

For several years now I’ve been agitating for cause marketing for retailer’s house brands. Now I’ve finally seen one from Kroger benefiting breast cancer research. Here’s my argument; in recessions house brands do very well. But once the hard times are over, consumers return to the name brands. But if a cause marketing effort could help a retailer preserve even 5 percent of the customers that switched during the recession, it could potential be worth tens of millions to the bottom line every year. I originally made my case for house brand cause marketing back in a post on November 18, 2008. In the declining economy, people in the UK, the US and elsewhere are buying more ‘house brands.’ Of course they are, you say. What could make more sense than to get the same-quality or nearly the same quality for a meaningful savings? I don’t have a handy chart to demonstrate, but this is what always happens in bad economic times. When the economy dips, sales of cheaper house brands and generics tak...

For more than three decades Campbell’s admirable Labels for Education has helped the soup maker maintain pricing power, fend off competitors and kept soup and the company’s other consumer package goods relevant for kids. The result is that Campbell’s is a veritable fortress, especially in condensed soups, but also in ready-to-eat soups. One of Campbell’s few competitors of consequence is Progresso, which specializes in ready-to-eat soup and so-called 'meal replacement.' Progresso was privately held but has long been owned by General Mills. General Mills, of course, has its own label cause marketing program benefiting schools called Boxtops for Education . Boxtops for Education is younger, but no less admirable than Labels for Education and the benefits accrue in cold, hard cash, rather than in goods, which is how Labels for Education works. Boxtops is now the bigger campaign in part because they allow brands other than General Mills participate. But I note that the Labels for...

Following General Mills’ lead , Campbell’s Labels for Education is rebranding so as to be more appealing to would-be partners. “The logo was very heavily Campbell-branded,” Mike Salzberg, president, Campbell Sales, told Brandweek. “We’ve never gone outside as far as sharing it or getting partners. But now we believe there is an opportunity for partnerships, starting with the one we formed with the Grammy Foundation.” (The logo on the left is the old one. When I get the new one I'll share it). With this new ‘open source cause marketing’ approach Campbell is doubling down in the bad economy. “In a troubled economy, being able to collect and win any free stuff in places where they’re taking things away [works],” says Salzberg. Now in its 36th year, Labels for Education has generated more than $110 million in goods and supplies for the nation’s schools. About 75 percent of the nation’s schools participate in Labels for Education. Campbell’s renewed effort underscores something I’ve wri...

Faithful Readers: My main computer is in the shop and I’m scrambling a little more than usual. I saw a news item today from the Associated Press that showed that store brands are showing a meaningful and bottom-line important uptick in sales. Key sentence… "Kroger said 27 percent of its sales in its most recent quarter came from its own brands and fueled most of the company’s overall grocery volume growth for the year — a trend it expects to continue." So in honor of my computer I’m going to repost something on cause marketing and private label brands that originally appeared on November 11, 2008. In the declining economy, people in the UK , the US and elsewhere are buying more ‘house brands.’Of course they are, you say. What could make more sense than to get the same-quality or nearly the same quality for a meaningful savings? I don’t have a handy chart to demonstrate, but this is what always happens in bad economic times. When the economy dips, sales of cheaper house bra...

In the declining economy, people in the UK , the US and elsewhere are buying more ‘house brands.’ Of course they are, you say. What could make more sense than to get the same-quality or nearly the same quality for a meaningful savings? I don’t have a handy chart to demonstrate, but this is what always happens in bad economic times. When the economy dips, sales of cheaper house brands and generics take off. And when the economy recovers consumers go back to the major brands. For the foreseeable future, price is going to be major driver for the consumer. Imagine this scenario: a shopper faces two cans of cream of mushroom soup, the store brand and the dominant brand in the US, Campbell's. The store brand has respectable quality and is 26 percent cheaper per ounce. In a face off like that, Campbell’s market share would erode very seriously sans their incredible market shelf space and decades-old Labels for Education program, in my view. Now if the store brand started a well thought-...

The Reputation Institute and the Boston College Center for Corporate Citizenship recently released their list of the top 50 companies in the United States in terms of corporate social responsibility. In the survey of public opinion, the top ten were: Google Campbell Soup Johnson & Johnson Walt Disney Kraft Foods General Mills Levi Strauss UPS Berkshire Hathaway Microsoft I took the list and ranked the 50 according to the amount of cause marketing that I’m aware of from each company. 0 meant that I had never seen any cause marketing from them. 1 meant I’m aware of cause marketing promotions about once a year. 2 meant I’m aware of perhaps two cause marketing promotions a year. 3 meant I’m aware of perhaps monthly cause marketing promotions in a year. 4 meant I’m aware of the company’s cause marketing as often as once a week 5 meant I'm aware of cause marketing from the company on a daily basis. Of the 50 companies, the only one I was unaware of was Express Scripts, a pharmacy s...

On October 1, 2008 Cone Inc. , in conjunction with the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University, released the best validated proof yet that cause-related marketing gives certain products a sales lift. The study had two parts. In the first, 182 individuals aged 18-62 and broadly representative of the American consumer reviewed the contents of a new regional magazine. Each were randomly assigned to either a ‘cause’ group or a control group. The cause group saw cause-related marketing advertisements for four products: shampoo; toothpaste; chips; and lightbulbs. The control group did not see the CRM ads. Then the study participants were ushered into a convenience store setting with approximately 150 SKUS. Some of products had a shelf tag that said something like, ‘great value.’ Others said, “proud supporter of…” Study participants were given real money to shop with and were allowed to take home both the products they bought and any leftover money. While all four products saw a sales lif...

Nestle Waters North America has a label campaign out called GoLife that benefits schools by providing sports equipment and school trips. But there’s an elephant in the classroom. If label campaign benefiting schools sounds like familiar ground, you’re right. Campbell’s has been doing one for more than 30 years, and General Mills has been doing their Boxtops for Education campaign for 12 years. General Mills is the larger of the two in no small part because schools can redeem the Boxtops for cash rather than merchandise. Schools and PTAs/PTOs encourage parents to collect boxtops/labels and assign someone to manage all the collecting, counting and redeeming. In my kids’ school one of the secretaries has this assignment and there are two large barrels in the school office, one for Labels and one for Boxtops. Before the Internet this was a whole lot more work than it is now. But even still there’s probably not too many school secretaries or PTA/PTO label coordinators who relish this par...

Less doesn’t always mean less. Sometimes in life there’s an inverse relationship between resources and creativity. For instance, Einstein didn’t need the Large Hadron Collider to figure out relativity. Then again, sometimes less is less. And that’s certainly true of this promotion from Henkel. This doubletruck FSI page from August 10, 2008 is more a promotion than a cause-related marketing campaign. But there is a cause element. The page features pictures of kids heading back to school and promises that some lucky school is going to win $25,000. School cause-related marketing in the United States is a well-trod path. Both Campbell’s and General Mills do it to great effect. Henkel could do a whole lot worse than emulate either one. The promotion is not tied to sales of any of Henkel’s products. Rather it’s contest driven. You point your Internet browser to henkelhelps.com and write a 200-500 word essay on what your school could do with that lone prize. For one school $25,000 is a me...

You Say You Want an Evolution? There’s not a card-carrying cause marketer who’s been in the business more than 10 years or so who doesn’t owe a debt of gratitude to Cone , Inc. the cause-marketing and social responsibility agency now owned by the Omnicom Group. Back in the day 14 years ago when we were knocking on corporate doors, putting together proposals and making presentations to corporate marketers about the only substantive weapon we had at our disposal that suggested that cause marketing worked was the old Cone-Roper survey of attitudes about cause marketing. It was a revelation and it helped enormously. The Cone surveys have been often updated over the years. The latest version of the Cone study, called the Cone Cause Evolution Study , is out and many of my fellow cause-marketing bloggers and analysts have already done an admirable job of addressing the study’s intriguing findings. Check Selfish Giving , or David Hessekiel’s newsletter at the Cause Marketing Forum , for instan...

Wind-Powered Cause Marketing As I write this, I don’t know exactly where the electricity that powers my computer comes from. I live in Utah and a good deal of electrical power is generated from locally-mined coal. So it could have come from a relatively dirty source like that. I’m about five miles away from a canyon stream where there’s been a small hydroelectric plant for more than 80 years. Environmentally-speaking, that’s quite clean. Moreover, this part of the American West is dotted with super-sized hydroelectric plants. So it could have come from one of those sources, too. Or maybe a nuclear or solar power plant. Illustrated above is an interesting cause-related marketing and sweepstakes campaign from Silk , the soymilk which is positioned against its competition in two main ways. The first is that it’s kept in the refrigerator case near the dairy milk and thereby tastes more like cow’s milk. Soymilk doesn't have to be refrigerated. Silk, in fact has a line of soymilk that i...