Cause Marketing

My old friend, author Joe Waters, outed me yesterday in his post at Selfishgiving.com . As he pointed out I live and work in Utah, one of the least populated states in the Union. How small? We have three Congressional districts in the whole state. Metropolitan Boston, where Joe lives, has five by itself. So how is it possible that Utah could be, as my headline puts it, a capital of cause marketing? Before I answer that directly, let me first describe some cause marketers who started in Utah. Jay Vestal, now a VP at the Association of Zoos and Aquariums and formerly at both the National Forest Foundation and the National Park Foundation lives and works in Utah. Also in Utah is Jay Aldous, formerly of UNICEF. Jay’s now independent and his clients have included the Red Cross, Special Olympics, Habitat for Humanity and other blue chip nonprofits. The two Jays did more to further cause marketing in the very earliest days than anyone else I can think of short of Carol Cone. To paraphrase New...

The printed edition of Fortune Magazine runs a regular feature called ‘My Metric’ wherein business leaders identify informal but telling measures of current economic activity. In the January 17, 2011 Michael Glimcher , CEO of Glimcher Realty Trust cited as his metric an increased number of black cars on the streets of New York City as a sign of the U.S. economy’s (still pending?) resurgence. That got me thinking, what unconventional metrics evidence the power of certain cause marketing efforts? One immediately leapt to mind, although only General Mills, which makes Yoplait yogurt in the U.S., can measure it. The Yoplait lid at left... which I purchased in December 2010... can NOT be redeemed for a $0.10 donation to Susan G. Komen for the Cure. Instead it promotes Yoplait’s sponsorship of Komen’s Race for the Cure events, which are numerous. But I’d bet you a six-pack of Yoplait Greek Honey Vanilla that people nonetheless still send in some number of the lids above in an attempt to re...