Cause Marketing

It’s National Breast Cancer Awareness Month ... the 25th anniversary!... and stores and the media are flooded with cause marketing for breast cancer research, raising the question: is cause marketing possible for non-breast cancer charities? It seems to me that other cause campaigns are chipping away at the edges of National Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Here are a handful of recent examples, all featuring celebrities as it turns out: Electrolux will donate $1 to the Ovarian Cancer Research Fund this fall when you send a virtual cake to someone. That’s my cake to the left in the OCRF’s trademark turquoise. Frankly the virtual cake didn’t exactly track for me. That is, other than the fact that you can bake a cake in an Electrolux oven, it wasn’t clear to me what one thing had to do with another. As usual, daytime TV diva Kelly Ripa lent her promotional support. Former President Jimmy Carter and First Lady Rosalynn Carter headlined efforts for the UN designated World Habitat Day on M...

You can’t swing a corded mouse online without running into the daytime double-threat actress/talk show host Kelly Ripa and her work on behalf of the Ovarian Cancer Research Fund . I get, it seems like, weekly email notices from Electrolux telling me to visit the ‘ Lemonade Stands ,’ of OCRF supporters. The Lemonade Stands are the charity part of a broader Kelly Ripa-powered promotion for Electrolux curiously called ‘ Kelly Confidential .’ The Stands represent an intriguing variation on virtual paper icons for MDA that I’ve profiled before. To support the stands you’re asked to donate amounts from $1 (the default) to $50. The donations are processed through Paypal. When you open a stand, Electrolux will donate the first $1. There's also a win a refrigerator contest element when you open a stand. Electrolux will donate up to a total maximum of $15,000 for the lemonade campaign. That is, just the first 15,000 stands get the $1 donation. Electrolux’s total pledge to OCRF is $500,000. ...

Electrolux is back with perky daytime talker Kelly Ripa just in time for Earth Day. The most interesting wrinkle in this year’s campaign is a kind of virtual paper icon campaign for the benefiting charity, Global Green USA. The money is donated by Electrolux a dollar at a time to Global Green USA ’s green schools initiative when you virtually plant a flower. KaBOOM , the nonprofit playground builder, convinced two-time Dancing With the Stars winner Julianne Hough (who spent part of her growing up years just a few miles from where I live) to pony up $100,000 for charity. The donation is also released a dollar at a time when you enter photos and descriptions of playgrounds in your neighborhood. Notably ecumenical, the $100K goes not to KaBOOM, but to six other charities like Jumpstart , First Book , YMCA , etc. There’s also a contest element to meet Hough. ( The picture to the left comes from juliannehough.com) Portland, Oregon-based fashion e-tailer saraseven.com launched with the p...