Cause Marketing

In the fall of 2012 the New York Attorney General’s office released Five Best Practices for Transparent Cause Marketing . The first one was “clearly describe the promotion.” We might assume that the AG was speaking only to marketers with malintent (to use the neologism). But being clear and understandable can also be a problem for marketers with good intent too. Case in point: This coming weekend June 28-29 Dave Matthews Band is doing a two-day concert at the Susquehanna Bank Center in Camden, New Jersey. The promoter of the concert is Reverb, which is a 501(c)(3) with a mission to make concerts more sustainable. Reverb frequently partners with other nonprofits in the tours it promotes. For the Dave Matthews Band concert in Camden the nonprofit partner is the Food Bank of South Jersey. Reverb asks that fans bring non-perishable food with them to donate to the food bank. That’s a promotion we’ve all seen and can understand, right? But, amazingly, the press release issued by Reverb...

One of the biggest chunks of the local economy where I live comes from the Bingham Canyon Mine, which is also a generous philanthropic donor to hundreds of local charities. But why so many, I ask? The Bingham Canyon Mine in the southwest corner of Utah’s Salt Lake Valley is said to be the deepest open-pit mine in the world. So deep you can see it from space. On the lip of the pit they have a visitor’s center along with spotting scopes to look into the void at the mining activity. The mine, owned by Kennecott and its corporate parent Rio Tinto, charges a modest vehicle entrance fee that goes to the Kennecott Utah Copper Visitor’s Center Charitable Foundation, a 501(c)(3) private foundation which divvies it up the proceeds among local charities. There’s also a gift shop in the visitor’s center and proceeds from the sales of items there also benefits the Foundation. The Foundation’s board, comprised of community members who serve without compensation, gets together annually to divvy up th...

This is awkward, but I have a bone to pick with Panera Bread Company, which along with its franchisees, operates 1,652 bakery-cafes under three different names. As a cause marketer, what could I possibly have to complain about Panera? The company has a menu full of organic ingredients, including antibiotic-free chicken. Many of their stores give away unsold bread every night to food banks where they operate. The company just launched a new Facebook campaign called Food Chain Reaction that will donate up to 500,000 bowls of their black bean soup to the hungry through Feeding America. And they do all this and are still first rate operators. I’ve never had a bad meal at a Panera. Moreover, they just launched in Boston their fifth nonprofit Panera Cares Community Café, which would have been called a soup kitchen 20 years ago. Panera Cares Cafes feed people regardless of their ability to pay, although their business model very much requires paying customers. Panera is a company that truly ...

A new survey of corporate communicators finds that most companies spend no more than 10 percent of their communications budget telling the world about their CSR efforts, and fifty percent of their communications outreach is media relations and internal audiences like employees. The survey comes from London-headquartered Grayling , the world’s second largest independent PR agency with annual billings of $148 million. Among other findings: Just 12 percent of companies use social media to talk about CSR/sustainability efforts. Only 52 of companies believe that the media is interested in covering CSR issues. Thirty percent believe that impact of their CSR is to their corporate reputation; just 6 percent think that it positively affects sales. Companies say the main drivers for CSR/sustainability are a genuine sense of responsibility (31 percent); staff morale (16.6 percent); government regulation (12.4 percent). The top three areas of focus for CSR/sustainability are ...

A professor at UCLA’s Anderson School of Management and a researcher at the University of Paris-Dauphine have found that companies which follow international environmental standards have employee productivity that is 16 percent higher than companies which don’t. The study, called, 'Environmental Standards and Labor Productivity'  tested three hypotheses: Hypothesis 1: The adoption of environmental standards is associated with greater labor productivity. Hypothesis 2: Training mediates the relationship between the adoption of environmental standards and greater labor productivity. Hypothesis 3: Interpersonal contacts mediate the relationship between the adoption of environmental standards and greater labor productivity. The authors, Magali A. Delmas of UCLA and Sanja Pekovic of the University Paris-Dauphine, looked at a 2006 employee-employer survey of 5200 private French firms with 20 or more employees, and compared the answers against a database of companies that had recei...

A new Internet browser plug-in will tell you if a product you’re looking at on an online retailer uses child labor in its production. Called aVOID , it currently works with the Safari and Chrome browsers and will soon be available for Firefox. The plugin, whose creation was made possible by the German company Earthlink, works with many of the major online retailers in Germany, France, the U.K and the United States, including Asos, Yoox, Amazon, Target, Macys, Zalando, Google Shopping, Frontlineshop and Otto. If your German is better than mine, you can also read here a list of companies and how they rank in terms of utilization of child labor in the manufacture of various product lines. The plugin draws on a database provided by the cause Active Against Child Labour. Back in November 2011, after reading the horrifying book “Half the Sky” by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, I committed to help the plight of girls and women in the developing world with this blog and in other ways. ...

A new survey from the U.K. finds donors still chary about donating via some technology-enabled means. The survey finds that 51 percent of Britons have put some money in collection canisters, while 31 percent have made donations through donation boxes at the charitable institutions themselves. But only two percent had participated in change round-up schemes whereby people add some change to round it up to the next highest pound, with the additional amount going to charity. In the U.K. they call these “round-pound” donations. Fourteen percent said they’d donated via text message, a mechanism that has been around several years longer in the U.K. than in the United States.  Meanwhile, less than 1 percent had donated via ATMs. Only 2 percent said they’d consider doing so in the future. The research was conducted for the National Funding Scheme by Ipsos Mori. Says the website, "the National Funding Scheme (NFS) allows UK and visiting tourists to easily make a donation through digital c...

What do affluent travelers want from airlines, hotels, resorts, tour operators and cruise lines when it comes to corporate social responsibility? Conde Nast Traveler , whose magazine has about 810,000 affluent subscribers asked its readers some of those very questions and more and published the results in September 2011. Here are responses to select Conde Nast Traveler questions: Ninety-three percent said travel companies should be responsible for 'protecting the environment.' What might protecting the environment look like according to Traveler readers:? 63 percent said building energy-efficient buildings. 76 percent said using solar power 69 percent said reuse towel (there’s the low-handing fruit for any hotel or resort) 63 percent said install low-flow toilets and showers 54 percent said use less air conditioning 51 percent said reuse wastewater 12 percent said provide carbon offsets through fees The long-hanging fruit there is plainly reusing towels. Likewise, ...

Some things go better together in threes; a cheeseburger, fries and a Coke, for instance. Or, Crosby, Stills and Nash. Or, Athos, Porthos and Aramis. Or, Groucho, Chico and Harpo. Or, Newton’s Laws of Motion. Or, faith, hope and charity. It’s becoming increasingly clear to me that companies which face the consumer better do three things well: practice corporate social responsibility; have a strong green tint; and, engage in cause marketing. Time was when companies could pick one of the three and be fine. But the corporate environment has changed. Now companies like Starbucks have altered consumer expectations and demands of what corporate social responsibility means. Starbucks pays its employees fairly and offers benefits. It sells fair-trade coffee to benefit its farmer-suppliers. It works to lower its environmental footprint. And it does smart cause marketing. Like no other large company, Starbucks practices the Holy Trinity of corporate social responsibility. Starbucks, along with C...

Starting today in my fair city is the Outdoor Retailer Summer Market, the trade show of the $10.85 billion Outdoor Industry Association. About 25,000 vendors, exhibitors, attendees and the media are expected. But only one person will be at the show covering cause marketing and corporate social responsibility campaigns and efforts by manufactures and retailers, and that’s yours truly. I’ll snag interviews, get comments and talk to leaders about how they’re using cause marketing to give them strategic advantage in the growing outdoor industry. Then I’ll post them on the blog and at Twitter for you to read and watch. Follow me here on the blog. My Twitter handle is @paulrjones. My hashtag for the event is #ORcausemarketing. Finally, if there's question you have for anyone in the industry about cause marketing or corporate social responsibility, send them to on Twitter and I'll try and track them down.

What do people mean these days when they speak of corporate social responsibility? Does it mean extracting sea turtles out of fishing nets or not eating monoculture salmon? Does it mean not out-sourcing jobs to cheaper foreign lands even if it raises the standard of living in those places? What if the outsourced jobs go to foreign union members? A friend maintains that his H-1 Hummer, which he expects to drive for 20 years, has less negative effect on the environment than a shiny new Nissan Leaf, which will last only until its batteries die. Is he right? Is it more socially responsible for a company to donate to an AIDS orphan cause in Africa than to a ballet company in Africa? What if the ballet company in Africa employs AIDS victims or does a benefit for AIDS victims? Some of these questions are ethical questions and most of us aren't ethicists. So how are we supposed to navigate the thicket of sometimes competing and oftentimes perplexing conundrums framed as issues of corporate...

In December 2008 I signed up with 'Blue Sky,' a wind energy offsets program from my electric utility, so as to help mitigate the carbon footprint of the Cause Marketing blog. Earlier this month I got the first full-year statement from Rocky Mountain Power, my electric utility, which you can see on the left. The statement explains how many offsets I bought and totes up the total number of kilowatts purchased by my fellow customers and I. Better still, they give my numbers some real shape and meaning. My 2009 Blue Sky purchase helped avoid the release of nearly 3,000 pounds of carbon dioxide, the equivalent of NOT driving nearly 3,000 miles in the car. But Rocky Mountain Power nonetheless stumbles with this statement. The paper it was printed on should have been recycled!

Dear Friends: I'll be in Washington, D.C. next week for business and have some availability for meetings on Wednesday and Thursday, Feb. 24 and 25. Want to talk cause marketing, marketing, corporate social responsibility, fundraising, nonprofit innovation, or the like? Or just catch up? So would I. Email me at aldenkeene[@]gmail[dot]com and suggest a meeting. Warm regards, Paul

This post is endorsed by 'President Barack Obama,' 'Oprah Winfrey,' 'Hillary Clinton,' 'Coldplay' and other high-ranking search terms in Google. The hope-filled inauguration of President Barack Obama yesterday morning means that 2009 is still dewy enough that we can talk about New Year’s resolutions. Professionally I set a series of goals each year including sales and profitability goals. I’ve also set a grand total of one professional New Year’s resolution. I resolve to spend more time evangelizing the advantages and benefits of cause marketing.  In the past I have contented myself to talk about the many positives of cause marketing with clients and on this blog. The blog is easy to find if you know the word ‘cause marketing.’ But not that many people know the expression or the ideas behind it. Google’s keyword search tool says that in December 2008 the search volume for the term cause marketing was 14,800 with another 4,400 for the search ter...

Ragan Communications and Pollstream just released a poll that finds that corporate communicators want their companies to engage in more corporate social responsibility (CSR); they just can’t come up with a good business reason why or decide who should drive it. This follows an earlier poll from IBM and covered in this space , that reported that corporate executives want to see more CSR, too, and were devoting resources to it. The poll was part of a series spearheaded by Ragan that regularly queries some 439 corporate communicators in North and South America, Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia. The communicators split almost evenly over the issue of who should run a company’s CSR efforts. Just about 50 percent it should be a standalone department that reports directly to the CEO. The other 50 percent said CSR should fall under either media relations, internal communications or marketing. It would be a measure of the esteem that CSR holds in a company if it operated independently and r...

Buttonhole a CEO CEOs worldwide plan to increase their investments 25 percent over the next three years to better to better understand and reach socially-minded customers, according to a worldwide survey of CEOs released this month by IBM’s Global Business Service Unit. On February 22, I wrote about IBM’s case for corporate social responsibility (CSR) based on a survey of 250 CEOs. This second, larger survey of CEOs called the “Global CEO Study” tallied results from 1103 CEOs from 40 countries and 32 industries using face-to-face interviews. That 25 percent increase in investments represents the largest percentage increase of any trend identified in the study. Among other pertinent findings: CEOs believe that customer expectations around corporate social responsibility are increasing, and that CSR will play an important role in differentiating enterprises in the future. More than ever a company’s CSR profile matters to customers. And while ‘green’ initiatives are top of mind, the CEOs...

According to a recent survey, 68 percent of business leaders are using corporate social responsibility (CSR) to create new revenue streams and 54 percent believe that their CSR endeavors are giving their companies a competitive edge. These and other findings come from a report issued Feb 12 by the IBM Institute for Business Value, a unit of Big Blue’s business consulting division. The Institute surveyed 250 business leaders worldwide and found that businesses are increasingly using the elements of corporate social responsibility to differentiate themselves from competitors, lower costs, and bolster their bottom line. “CSR is no longer viewed as just a regulatory or discretionary cost,” the report’s authors, George Pohle and Jeff Hittner write in the introduction, “but an investment that brings financial returns.” The survey suggests that momentum is gaining in CSR. The survey identified five areas where companies have ‘focused their CSR activities’ … regulatory compliance, strategic ph...

College students are tricky to reach nowadays with traditional media. Unlike previous generations they refuse to take their medicine and watch a lot of network TV from 8pm to 11pm like their predecessors. Oh they consume media like a retired sumo wrestler eats carbs at an all you can eat buffet. But if you don’t have a message that’s well suited for their cell phones or i-Pods, or that they can mashup on their Facebook page or blog, or if it doesn’t work as a sponsored billboard in Grand Theft Auto then good luck reaching them in a meaningful way. One approach that consistently works is cause-related marketing and other elements of corporate social responsibility. This fact was underscored in the findings of a survey of college students published last week by Alloy Media + Marketing and conducted in April of 2007 by Harris Interactive. Alloy Media + Marketing, a New York City-based provider of ‘non-traditional media programs,’ developed a list of the top 10 “Most Socially Responsible ...

A New Rigor is Found In Arguments for Corporate Social Responsibility The most lasting rebuke of corporate social responsibility came from Milton Friedman , the small of stature economist who even in death continues to cast a huge intellectual shadow. In September 1970 Friedman wrote “The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase Profit,” for the New York Times Magazine. In it, he argued persuasively that corporate social responsibility was just so much twaddle, socialism in a corporate wrapper that undermines a free society. Businesses that practiced corporate responsibility were playing Robin Hood with someone else’s money. “The discussions of the ‘social responsibilities of business,’” Friedman wrote, “are notable for their analytical looseness and lack of rigor. What does it mean to say that ‘business’ has responsibilities? Only people have responsibilities.” Instead, companies should maximize their profits and return capital to shareholders so that individuals could then do...