Cause Marketing

Imagine that a sponsor and a cause engage in a sincere and well-meant cause marketing activity and out of carelessness they word the offer poorly in the activation materials. Perhaps the amount being donated is really oblique or seems to suggest something that isn’t true. And then some enterprising attorney launches lawsuit and he or she finds a sympathetic judge to certify it as a class-action. This very scenario came up in a discussion group at the Cause Academy convocation last week in Scottsdale, Arizona. On this topic, we concluded two things as a group: That it will probably happen in the near future That it will have the effect of ensuring that cause marketers everywhere make their campaigns more transparent In my view, it will also have a chilling effect on cause marketing as a whole. Here’s why: Some of the biggest charities, names we all know, are sitting on hundreds of millions of dollars in reserve. There are many legitimate reasons why nonprofits keep money in reser...

In the United States the practice of cause marketing is subject to governmental regulations, mainly at the state and local level. If your organization is a nonprofit just beginning a cause marketing relationship, you’d be well served by seeking out expert legal advice before you sign any deals. On that count, today’s post on the legalities of cause marketing comes courtesy of a guest poster, Maria E. Recalde, Shareholder and Chair of the Corporate Department, Sheehan Phinney Bass + Green PA, a law firm founded in 1937 with four offices in New Hampshire and Massachusetts. My thanks to Maria for allowing me to post this article that originally appeared in Sheehan Phinney's newsletter. A cause marketing venture (also known as a "charitable sales promotion" or "commercial co-venture") is generally defined as a sales campaign in which part of the consumer's purchase of a product or service from a business - in cause marketing parlance "a commercia...