Cause Marketing

In another case of cause marketing mashed up with games, GoodGames offers a fraction of a cent to charity every time you play a game like Mahjongg Dimensions or Pyramid Solitaire on their website. Play three games and the cause of your choice…from a list of nearly 110,000 registered charities…gets one penny. These aren't hard-core games, just versions of familiar favorites for casual online game-players. The games come from Arkadium and the donation comes from advertising revenue on the site. Each game played generates about a penny in advertising revenue, which is split between your charity, Arkadium and GoodGames . In the past we’ve talked about gamified cause marketing, which can take several approaches . GoodGames is from the same company that brought us GoodSearch, GoodShop, and GoodDining, which together have generated a little bit less than $10 million for affiliated causes. The GoodSearch search engine generates a penny for your cause when use it. GoodSearch’s sear...

Half the Sky started out as a book about the shocking oppression and exploitation of women… especially in the developing world… from New York Times reporters Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, then it became a multi-part special on PBS and now it’s a Facebook game produced by Games for Change and designed by Frima Studio. I didn’t think that the PBS special captured the pathos of the book, in part because the way into the TV show was mediated by Hollywood stars; Eve Mendes, Meg Ryan, Olivia Wilde, Diane Lane. The actors could only react to the horrors they saw and heard about and I didn’t think it often worked. I got the sense the actors were sort of helicoptered in, reacted while the cameras rolled and then went back home, sincerely moved perhaps, but not fully able to transfer their heartache to me. It felt forced. Kristof and WuDunn, by contrast, with just their notepads, have seen firsthand all the horrors depicted in the book, not recounted for the cameras and the actors. A...

There’s some swell cause marketing messaging on many packaged goods products these days, but after the messaging gets in the home, then what? This thought was promoted by a recent study from MeadWestvaco, which found that after people get a product home, they are less satisfied with the packaging than when they pulled it off the grocer’s shelf. Think about it, products like a can of soup probably get eaten in one fell swoop, while a box of cereal may last for weeks, and a tin of nutmeg might stay in the home for years. In other words a cause marketing message could be in the pantry for days, months, or years. Why wouldn’t the cause and the sponsor want to continue to interact with a consumer whose loyalty is proven? Naturally you should put the pertinent URLs on the packaging. That’s an obvious first step. Loyalty programs like My Coke Rewards, which has a cause marketing component, are another answer, and a good one.  Several prominent cause marketing efforts require you to sen...

Back in October 2012, Purina ran a FSI ad highlighting an intriguing trivia game promotion benefiting www.adoptapet.com. Think Jeopardy for dog and cat lovers. Because of my focus on National Breast Cancer Awareness Month I didn’t have the opportunity to post on the promotion in October, which was scheduled to run as long as from October 23, 2012 through November 29, 2012. I say 'scheduled to' because the promotion ended on Tuesday, November 1 when the donations reached the $50,000 mark, the cap amount. As of yesterday, Sunday, Nov. 4, you could still play the trivia game, it just no longer generates a donation for www.adoptapet.com . Here’s how Purina’s gamified cause marketing promotion worked. You logged onto www.pureloveforpets.com and choose either cat or dog trivia. Then there was a registration process that required your name, email and address. For each correct answer, Purina donated $0.25 to adoptapet.com. Each email address was limited to a $10 donation per day...

Zynga has been using cause marketing for more than two years now and other game developers are taking note. Mobile game developer XEOPlay offers Tilt World that helps to reforest Madagascar, the world’s fourth largest island and a hotspot for biodiversity, owing to its relative isolation. Lemurs, a member of the primate family, are the nation-state’s most recognized denizens. Just as Lemurs are a branch of the primate family Tilt World is related to Mario Brothers and Pac-Man/Ms. Pac-Man. The goal is for Flip, a tadpole, to eat carbon molecules, plant mushrooms, recycle bottle caps and capture fireflies as an alternative energy source.   There’s 15 levels and points earned in the game translate to tree seeds purchased for and on behalf of the tree-planting charity WeForest. XEOPlay’s goal is to plant 1 million trees in Madagascar, which suffers from the effects of deforestation. My description makes it all sound a little bit earnest, but Tilt World looks fun. I haven’t h...

On the heels of my posts on games and cause marketing in this space and at MediaPost.com , people have been asking me about how so-called 'gamification' can be used in cause marketing. Part of the answer has already been provided by Joe Waters (and others) in their coverage of Foursquare, which can be easily utilized in cause marketing. Zynga and its suite of games have done meaningful cause marketing, notably for disaster relief in Haiti and Japan. A handful of sites including Gamesthatgive.net (whose revenue model is based on advertising) offer donations to nonprofits based on how long you play standard faire. Plus 3, a social networking site for people increasing their physical fitness does much the same, albeit with fewer gamified elements. Big brands like Coke and General Mills have built games into their cause marketing strategies. Even still, gamification and cause marketing are still basically at the Atari stage in their co-development. Pong was the start of video/com...