Cause Marketing

There’s a big pink ribbon behind the Chevy sign on the building at my local dealer. Chevy has multiple promotions that their dealers seemingly can embrace to whatever degree they prefer. Chevy Service enables people to donate the rebate from certain oil changes and brake pad installations to the American Cancer Society. On October 6, Chevy donated $10 per test drive up to $130,000 for anyone who came into dealers and test-drove a Chevy. Plus, there's several more extensions. So, Ford is tied up with Susan G. Komen for the Cure in a merchandise effort called Ford Warriors in Pink. Starting in 1997 and for at least a dozen years following, BMW did both promotions and celebrity-studded merchandise sales on behalf Komen. Why are automotive companies targeting women so specifically? Because women have disproportionate influence on the car that households ultimately purchase. But few women have any love for the car buying process or hanging out at the dealership. Take the sting out of...

There’s been some chatter recently in the blogosphere and elsewhere about strategic cause marketing. That is, if you’re a sponsor, ensuring that your sponsorship of the cause bears some rational relationship to your business. The effort on the left from Montblanc, the fountain pen maker, pretty much passes muster. From June 2009 to May 2010 when you bought this special edition pen, called the Meisterstruck Signature for Good Edition, 10 percent of the purchase price went to a UNICEF education programs because “The ability to read and write is a fundamental human right and the most important asset to children.” (For examples of other Montblanc 'donation pens,' click here . For this campaign, Montblanc set a minimum donation of $1.5 million. And while we're at it, let us now take a moment to praise a campaign that sets a minimum donation, but not a maximum. Huzzahs to Montblanc)! I would have said that parents who can feed and shelter their children is a child’s most importan...

In a half-dozen English language magazines Ford Warriors in Pink has used pretty much the same ad (seen below) with a call to action to buy branded merchandise from the campaign’s website. Purchases benefit Susan G. Komen for the Cure. But the ad on the left from the Noviembre 2009 issue of People en Espanol is more of awareness and esteem builder for Spanish-speakers affected by cancer. Here’s how one bilingual friend translated it for me: This [way] isn’t going to be easy. This [other way] isn’t. It’ll be easy. A [quick] pause makes all the difference. Stop. Check yourself. Live. Fight against breast cancer. I’d be the first to say that you can’t just translate advertising from one language to another and expect it to remain effective. That said, while I can imagine a dozen reasons why Ford Warriors in Pink took this approach, none of them strike me as being terribly compelling. This is all the more puzzling to me since Fordcares.com , the site where you can but all the Warriors in ...