Alfred Hitchcock, the legendary filmmaker, used to speak of a movies’ “MacGuffin” or plot device. “In crook stories it is always the necklace and in spy stories it is always the papers,” he said. In short, a MacGuffin is a mechanical device that impels action. At left Humphrey Bogart is holding the MacGuffin that impelled action in John Huston’s classic movie The Maltese Falcon . For Hitchcock, the MacGuffin was often no more than a device, one that he often neglected after the action got going. But I don’t use the term MacGuffin in such a fleeting way. When I use the word I mean, what in your cause marketing campaign will make the target audience act? At first blush you might say that the cause or perhaps the offer is the MacGuffin. In the aftermath of the Haiti Earthquake, cause marketing campaigns sprouted up spontaneously and they worked. The cause was the MacGuffin. The same could probably be said of several breast cancer charities and one or two environmental charities; the cau...
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