Cause Marketing

Throughout October 2012, in honor of Breast Cancer Awareness Month, I’ll post on a new breast cancer cause marketing campaign each business day. First up is Clinique’s Great Skin, Great Cause moisturizing lotion now available wherever Clinique is sold, as well as online . The lotion is $36 and comes with a pink ribbon key ring and a breast cancer awareness pink ribbon charm. Of the $36, $10 goes to the cause, a generous donation amount from a dedicated sponsor. Clinique is owned by the Estee Lauder Companies, so the benefiting charity is the Breast Cancer Research Foundation, which was founded by Evelyn Lauder in 1993. Evelyn Lauder was the daughter-in-law of Estee and for many years the public face of the company until her death in 2011.  Evelyn Lauder, along with Alexandra Penney, then editor of Self magazine, also co-founded and popularized the pink ribbon as a symbol of the fight against breast cancer in 1992. In the 20 years since, the one place where you are almost guaran...

Should breast cancer awareness ever be more about the breast than it is the cancer? I wonder when I see ads like the one at the left by Estee Lauder. Over the last few years there’s been a general sexualizing of the disease that troubles me. Don’t get me wrong. Part of the early genius of Susan G. Komen for the Cure and her sister breast cancer charities was the recognition that breast cancer was different for women than, say, lung cancer, even if a cancer in the breast might be only a few centimeters away from a cancer in the lung. One reason why Komen et al acquired so much momentum is because there’s a personalness to breast cancer that also touches things like feminine sexuality. Survivors fight more than just the disease. Even as a clueless man I get that. Breast cancer affects a women’s sense of self in ways that other diseases, say, heart disease—which kills twice as many women in the United States as breast cancer—do not. But I don’t think the cause is well-served by ads like t...

~Let's Put Her to Work Paying Down the Deficit! ~ Currently on newsstands is Forbes magazine’s '100 Most Powerful Women' issue and there at number 11 is Lady Gaga, whose blurb tells us that she is 25, that she ‘banked $90 million last year’ and ‘raised $202 million to fight HIV/AIDS through MAC’s VIVA GLAM Lipstick and Lipgloss sales.” Holy Simoleans, Batman. $202 million?!!! That makes Lady Gaga the most effective single cause marketer ever given that she’s only been in the public eye for about three years. How did I miss this amazing cause marketing story? In fact, the truth is a little ‘more nuanced,’ as the politicians like to say, even if Gaga may really turn out to be among the greatest cause marketers ever. John Demsey, group president of The Estee Lauder Companies, which has owned MAC since 1997 and who chairs the MAC AIDS campaign, introduced some reality in an interview with the Wall Street Journal recorded February 18, 2011. The MAC AIDS Fund raises money for p...