Cause Marketing

In the December 1991 issue of Life magazine insurer Fireman’s Fund ran the image ad at the left that describes the insurer’s role in the restoration of Ellis Island. Read the body copy and conspicuous by its absence is any mention of Fireman’s Fund actually supporting the restoration financially. That was 20 years ago… just eight years after American Express’s seminal cause marketing effort on behalf of the restoration of the neighboring Statue of Liberty… and a lot has changed. Life magazine still ran ads for cigarettes, for instance. Moreover, I submit to you that if Ellis Island were being restored in 2011 Fireman’s Fund would almost certainly make a financial donation to the effort that would be mentioned in the ad. Joe Waters and Joanna MacDonald both started their careers in cause marketing in the early 1990s, (as did I). And in the process they and other pioneers of cause marketing have changed the way companies think about and communicate the ways that they benefit societ...