Cause Marketing

A public opinion survey published Nov. 1, 2012 by Ottawa-based Abacus Data finds Canadians very supportive of the basic practices and premises of cause marketing. The Internet survey of 1208 Canadians found the following: 82 percent say they would switch brands to support causes they care about. The same number of people say that companies should donate to causes. Canadians would be more likely to donate at checkout if the company would match their donation (67 percent), if offered a bounceback discount on their next purchase (61 percent), and if allowed to choose the cause their purchase supports from a list of charities (51 percent). Most Canadians want to know more about the specific impact of their contributions. 82 percent say that a company’s commitment to social and environmental issues helps them to decide where to buy or shop. 65 percent say such considerations inform how they invest. As a whole, Canadians are willing to travel an extra 18 minutes to...

Two cool new cause marketing concepts from two different Commonwealth countries. From New Zealand Donate your Deskto p invites people to download a little software to their desktop computer. Included in the download is permission to push a different ad to your desktop’s background every day. Proceeds from the ad sales benefit the charity of your choice. “Think of it as renting out your desktop background as an advertising space,” says Donate Your Desktop’s website, “with the proceeds going to charity.” The ads tend to be ‘Bing’-like with big and bold visuals. This is ‘push’ media made palatable by the addition of the cause marketing element. Wikipedia defines push media as, “… a style of Internet-based communication where the request for a given transaction is initiated by the publisher or central server. It is contrasted with pull, where the request for the transmission of information is initiated by the receiver or client.” Ten years ago push media was the ‘once and future ...

March Madness won’t start for another week or so, but as an adopted Canadian, I’m already thinking about who will win the Stanley Cup, probably some time in June. The Stanley Cup is the most storied trophy in professional sport in North America, dating to 1893. Unlike other trophies it’s permanent. That is, a new trophy is not made for each championship. It’s also the only trophy that is engraved with the names of the players and management from each championship team. How do they manage that without making the trophy too ginormous to hoist, even for the Great One as seen at the left? Well the trophy itself stays the same size; about three-feet tall and 35 pounds. It features a cup at the top with graduated bands or rings below that. Beneath those are five larger bands of the same size. Each of those bands has space for 13 championships. As they fill, the band at the top is removed and displayed at Hockey Hall of Fame and a new blank band is added to the bottom. Using this method, the...

Dear Faithful Readers: Thanksgiving, that most American of holidays, is today. When I say it’s the most American of holidays I mean no offense to my Canadian readers, who celebrate Thanksgiving the second Monday in October. So maybe I should call the most North American of holidays. Some Thanksgiving I’m going to write a post on the things Canadians and American have to be thankful for besides the world’s longest undefended border, a language, an appreciation for smoked meat sandwiches in Montreal, and a great holiday, even if it’s celebrated in separate months. But I have two pumpkin pies to prepare along with an apple caramel pie and my famous pecan pie. So here from 2007 is my favorite Thanksgiving post. Warm regards, Paul Today is Thanksgiving in the States, a day when we watch parades and American football before eating an enormous feast of turkey, ‘stuffing,’ and mashed potatoes, then chase it down with pumpkin pie. We Americans grew up with a cherished myth that the first thank...