Cause Marketing

One of the pretenses of reality TV in the United States is doing whatever you do in the name of charity. It seems like half the bikes built on the show American Chopper , for instance, are made to be donated to or otherwise auctioned off on behalf of charity. Likewise, basically every episode of The Celebrity Apprentice turns on one kind of charity fundraiser or another. It sorta has to be that way. The Donald really doesn’t want to turn loose on his empire a bunch of half-competent 20-watt celebrities. Before Arsenio Hall’s win on The Celebrity Apprentice May 20, 2012, Walgreens, the mega drugstore chain, developed and began selling a bracelet for $3, with $2 of that going to the Magic Johnson Foundation. The Foundation also received $250,000 thanks to Hall’s Apprentice win. The card that holds the bracelet says that Walgreens was “inspired by Arsenio Hall’s work to support the Magic Johnson Foundation and created this bracelet to symbolize our joint commitment.” Walgreen...

The cause marketing blog is, in large measure, an idea blog. It’s meant to help you, my faithful readers, to come up with ideas for better cause marketing. But ideas are easy. You gotta ‘ship’ as Seth Godin says, quoting Steve Jobs. Godin talks about ‘shipping’ in his recent book Linchpin . In one sentence it means that you must finish what you start, get it out the door, deliver your product or service, implement. In Godin’s case, he ships when his books hit the stores. I ship every weekday when a new post goes up on the cause marketing blog. Failure to ship is the usual reason why Donald Trump fires someone every Sunday night on The Celebrity Apprentice . Shipping is what Tom Hanks did at the end of his movie Castaway . Hanks' shipping in Castaway is lampooned in the video at the left. How can you ‘ship’ your cause marketing more effectively? There’s a lot of models out there, Godin’s included. The book Making Ideas Happen , from Scott Belsky has some ideas and tools on shipping....