Back in the 1980s, at the behest of Jerry Welsh, American Express trademarked the term ‘Cause-Related Marketing.’ Welsh, who was then executive vice president worldwide marketing and communications at Amex, coined the term ‘cause-related marketing’ to describe the legendary campaign to fund the restoration of the Statue of Liberty in 1983. In a Feb. 2009 interview with Welsh, he told me that the wording of this new term was purposeful. “I believe in the deliberate use of language, so I was careful in crafting the term ‘Cause-Related Marketing.’ CRM is not philanthropy; it’s rather marketing through an artful association with a charitable cause. Otherwise, I would have called it something like ‘Marketing-Related Philanthropy.’” Despite Welsh’s fastidiousness with language, one of the wonders of the term cause marketing is that it’s flexible enough to permit efforts for causes that aren’t officially-sanctioned charities. In my hometown of Salt Lake City, there’s a cause marketing campai...
Dedicated to highlighting and dissecting the best and the worst cause marketing promotions and campaigns.