Cause Marketing

Suppose when you get into the office tomorrow, the boss comes in and says, “I think we need to look seriously at cause marketing. Look into it will you?” Getting the right answers depends on asking the right questions. So where do you start? Let’s just stipulate that you’ll search the Internet. Maybe check the entries at Wikipedia.com or About.com. You’ll almost certainly come across the Cause Marketing Forum. If you go a little deeper you may find Cone, or other agencies that specialize in the practice. You may find IEG, which has a long history with cause marketing, but considers it to be a subset of sponsorship. Maybe you’ll go to Amazon.com and check the available titles. You’ll almost certainly find Business in the Community in England, which takes a very holistic approach to cause marketing and Business for Social Responsibility, which is basically its opposite number Stateside. Scratch the surface a little more and you’ll certainly find criticisms of the practice; usually variat...

Through May 9, 2010 each bucket of specially-marked KFC chicken sold generates a $.50 donation to Susan G. Komen for the Cure. The KFC bucket also invites you to visit bucketsforthecure.com to make an additional donation. As the website URL suggests, the campaign sports the unwieldy name of 'Buckets for the Cure." The redoubtable Scotty Henderson , and many others, have raised the issue of "cause-nitive dissonance,' to coin a term. That is whether fried food should be supporting breast cancer research, since research has shown obesity be a risk-factor for breast cancer and since fried chicken is high in fat. Many, many others, including the Wall Street Journal , have weighed in. This issue of 'tainted money' is one I've raised more than once and can appreciate. Back in 2007 Newsweek reporter Jessica Bennett asked me, "Advertising is obviously not about morals. But isn't there a moral conflict in the idea that cause marketing is tapping into consu...