Cause Marketing

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...

AutoZone, the car parts dealer with more than 4500 stores across the United States is headquartered in Memphis Tennessee. So too is St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. Not surprisingly AutoZone is a cause marketing supporter of St. Jude. Fedex, another Memphis-based company sponsors the St. Jude Classic, a PGA Tour event held each year at the TPC Southwind golf course, also in Memphis. It isn’t always the case that cause marketing tie-ins take place between companies and causes in the same area code. For instance, another of St Jude’s sponsors is Target, headquartered 700 miles upriver in Minneapolis, Minnesota. But if you’re a cause looking to start a cause marketing relationship a logical place to look for cause marketing sponsors is in your own backyard. Here’s five reasons why: The prospect is more likely to take your call. Locality improves the chance that the sponsor will respond. You probably already know someone there or can more easily make a connection than if the prospe...

Boston College Center for Corporate Citizenship released its annual CSR Index the other day even as Occupy Wall Street and its satellite efforts continue their protests that are, in part, anti-corporate . The top 10 were : Publix Super Markets Google UPS Kellogg’s Amazon.com Berkshire Hathaway FedEx Campbell Soup Baxter International 3M By my count I’ve seen cause marketing from six of the top 10 and 33 of the full list of 50 companies. According to the BCCCC the index is based on a survey of “how the public perceives a company in three dimensions:” "Citizenship: Does the company contribute positively to its surrounding community in a socially and environmentally responsible fashion? "Governance: Is the company business run in a fair and transparent fashion? Do stakeholders associate the company with high ethical business standards? "Workplace: Are employees treated fairly and paid a decent wage? Does the company invest in developing employee skill sets and career opport...

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....