Cause Marketing

Not every cause marketing campaign features the likes of the YMCA and Coke*. Sometimes it takes place between a charity which is very well known and a sponsor that isn’t. Or, vice versa. (*Interbrand ranks Coke as the top for-profit brand for 2012 . Cone ranked YMCA as the top nonprofit brand .) I call that dynamic ‘asymmetrical cause marketing.’ For instance, Shiseido, certainly Asia’s oldest and best-known cosmetic brand and the cause called Cancer and Careers, which I had to look up. The offer here is a straightforward transactional cause marketing effort. Buy a tube of Shiseido Lacquer Rouge lipstick in the color called ‘Disco’ for $25 and Shiseido will donate $5 to Cancer and Careers. Research and experience shows that the most reliable results comes when the sponsor’s brand and the cause’s brand are basically equally well-known. The other two possible dynamics… the cause is better known than the sponsor or the sponsor is better known than the cause… tend to produce results whe...