Cause Marketing

Some people shouldn’t be allowed to do their own cause marketing advertising. That’s what I thought after seeing this ad from the local franchisees for Window World, Doug and Kathy Llewellyn. On the left half of the ad, about two-thirds of the way down are not one but three logos for causes: Window World Cares , the franchisor’s foundation, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital , and Veterans Airlift Command . Three causes is probably two too many for their customers and prospects to understand and follow. Right now Window World Cares primarily supports St. Jude and Veterans Airlift Command. Which begs the question, if the other two are already on there, why put the WWC logo there as well? But ignore all that for a moment and put yourself in the mindset of a Window World franchisee like the Llewellyns. If you were them and you still wanted to support multiple causes, wouldn’t want to know which cause pulls the best? Print ads like this would allow them to do just that. This ad comes fr...

Wind-Powered Cause Marketing As I write this, I don’t know exactly where the electricity that powers my computer comes from. I live in Utah and a good deal of electrical power is generated from locally-mined coal. So it could have come from a relatively dirty source like that. I’m about five miles away from a canyon stream where there’s been a small hydroelectric plant for more than 80 years. Environmentally-speaking, that’s quite clean. Moreover, this part of the American West is dotted with super-sized hydroelectric plants. So it could have come from one of those sources, too. Or maybe a nuclear or solar power plant. Illustrated above is an interesting cause-related marketing and sweepstakes campaign from Silk , the soymilk which is positioned against its competition in two main ways. The first is that it’s kept in the refrigerator case near the dairy milk and thereby tastes more like cow’s milk. Soymilk doesn't have to be refrigerated. Silk, in fact has a line of soymilk that i...