Cause Marketing

Done right, cause marketing can be a terrific branding tool for the cause and the sponsor. But doing it right is the challenge. It’s easy to slap together a transactional cause marketing campaign for some consumable item; a box of Kleenix, a candy bar, a toothbrush. But when a consumer purchases an everyday item, that purchase probably doesn’t connect the cause, the sponsor, and the consumer at a very deep level. No one uses a Zip-Loc bag, which benefits schools through the Boxtops for Education campaign, and thinks about local school kids having better educational outcomes as a result.   As a marketer I don’t have any problem with that kind of imbedded giving that exists at a surface level. But if the sponsor or the cause wants to really build their brand, they’re going to need to add a little extra something. That’s what Sharpie has done in its effort on behalf of the City of Hope’s breast cancer research efforts. During October when you buy pink Sharpie products a donatio...

Most of the pink ribbon cause marketing we’ll see this month won’t make a clear distinction between research and awareness. Unless they say otherwise, the major pink ribbon charities put the money they raise from cause marketing where they deem best. As a former charity executive, I’ve long argued that for charities that’s one of the principal advantages of cause marketing. The problem is, over the years Komen in particular, but also other pink ribbon charities have positioned themselves as cure-seekers. It’s Susan G. Komen for the Cure, after all. But cancer cures are big-ticket items, costing billions of dollars and decades of time. So Komen, and others, have also covered their bets by also being about awareness. For instance, pressing women to get mammograms well before most doctors were recommending it. If breast cancer is caught at the earliest stages, the five-year survivability rate is 98 percent. And the mortality rate for breast cancer has been clipped by 30 percent since 19...

Trade groups exist to provide service to their members; research and publications, marketing and branding, lobbying and training, tradeshows and meetings, and the like. And now, one other thing they can do is to enable members to cause market. At least, that’s what the Mushroom Council is doing with a Breast Cancer Awareness Month effort benefiting the cancer research hospital, City of Hope . Wikipedia says there are 7,600 national trade groups in the United States. There are also trade associations at the regional, statewide, and local levels as well. Here’s how the Mushroom Council’s efforts on behalf of City of Hope work: “In total,” the Council has donated more than $800,000 to the City of Hope for “pilot clinical trials to support research on the potential cancer-fighting benefits of mushrooms.” Mushrooms are high in selenium and the City of Hope has identified a potential link between mushrooms and decreased cancer tumor growth in cells and animal tests. The press releas...

Cause marketing with consumer packaged goods often takes place on packaging. While companies are sometimes loathe to forgo this valuable real estate, it’s almost always the case that the campaign sponsor and cause both benefit most when the packaging explains the campaign well. Remember the wise words from our friends in direct marketing: “tell more, sell more.” In fact, I once undertook a study of higher value food items on store shelves for a client. What I found was that more expensive or high cachet food items had, on average, more than 20% words on their packaging than did less expensive substitute items. High cachet items were more likely to tell a story or include a narrative of some kind. The packaging items from the Alden Keene Cause Marketing Database, all circa 2002-2004, illustrate my point. Blue Sky Soda sells in natural food stores. I picked up this can at Whole Foods. Blue Sky, owned by the larger soda purveyor Hansen’s, is kind of the Shasta of natural sodas. That is, ...

A New Paper Icon Approach At Staples right now is this inventive paper icon campaign for City of Hope , a research and treatment hospital in Southern California with a specialty in cancer. It goes for the typical $1. When you scratch off the overprint, you get a bounce-back discount coupon for savings from $5 to $50 on subsequent purchases of specific items at Staples. While there have long been coupon icons, they typically are much larger. This approach is simpler and smaller. It’s also more versatile. It would be very easy to add a sweepstakes component. For instance, if City of hope has some kind of annual rallying point…a race, an event, a gala… the sweepstakes could bring some lucky winner(s) to the event. Although to be sure, laws in the United States would require a no-cost form of entry. I don’t know what it costs to print these icons, but on first blush I expect that with 4 colors it’s more than with the standard issue paper icons. City of Hope’s website says the campaign be...