Cause Marketing

The snow has already begun to fly here in the northern hemisphere, so that means all those outdoor charity walks, runs, races, golf tournaments and such are done everywhere except in the sunbelt until Spring 2012, right? Not so fast, Jack Frost. In fact, plenty of opportunities remain for outdoor events during the cold winter months. You just need to think outside the Summer equinox box. For instance, I’m helping a friend with a first of December fun-run benefiting the local homeless shelter. Weather in my neck of the woods can be pretty dicey in December. But that will be part of the fun because the short run will pass by the State’s biggest Christmas-lights lighting ceremony. I’ve heard of snowmobile rallies, cross-country and downhill ski fundraisers, ice skating events, polar bear plunges, ice fishing tourneys, even golfing in the snow! Add one more. A series of snowshoe events from Tubbs , which makes snowshoes. Starting in January 2012 at nine locations in Canada and the United S...

One of the infuriating things about the pink ribbon, emblematic of the fight against breast cancer, is that no one owns it in the United States. Consequently you get really silly things like pink sex toys and pink-labeled watermelon and pick pocketknives and more insidious stuff like these collectible ornaments that were advertised in Sunday's Courier Journal newspaper in Louisville, Kentucky that are a clear and unambiguous case of pinkwashing. Shouldn’t we just get rid of the mess and the chaos and just assign ownership of the pink ribbon to one charity and be done with it, much the way the trademark to the pink ribbon in Canada is owned by the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation? In a word, no. Here’s why: It’s very clear to me that the pink ribbon brand is much bigger because no one entity owns it than it would be if one entity did. Consider the case of the Android operating system which is in more smart phones than Apple’s OS or RIM’s OS, mostly because Google gives licenses aw...