Cause Marketing

One of the oldest tricks in the retail promotions handbook is to base your promotion around a holiday. That’s why you see chocolate promotions in around Valentine’s Day in February, and back to school sales in August, when most schools in the United States restart after the summer break. Merchants and retailers use holidays as a hook to hang their promotions on. It goes without saying that there’s nothing coded in the world’s DNA that compels back-to-school sales to take place in August, however. In counties where the summer school break is shorter back-to-school sales might take place in July. So if Memorial Day (the last Monday in May) or even Labor Day (the first Monday in September) sound like the perfect time to grill up some steaks on the BBQ, it’s because for more than 30 years that’s what grocers have been telling us. The point being, effective marketers are able draw connections that didn’t exist before between holidays and sales promotions. Now a cause is trying to dr...

Last Thursday, January 10, I heaped praise on the TOMS Shoes use of strategic cause-related marketing to improve the world, launch their business, and generate terrific word of mouth . Their appeal is specific, easy to understand, and streamlined. For every pair of TOMS Shoes you buy, another pair is donated to a child who needs them. I also greatly admired their “shoe drops,” whereby they invite customers to join them in places like South Africa and Argentina… at their own expense… to give away TOMS shoes to kids. TOMS, I wrote, was well on its way to creating a “cult brand,” like Harley-Davidson, Jimmy Buffet, or the Star Trek franchise. I did suggest there was more that TOMS could do to their website to make it more word of mouth friendly and left it at that. One person anonymously commented on the post, saying, in effect; “alrighty, smart guy, what would you do to optimize a website for word of mouth?” Glad you asked. I would do at least the following: TOMS should add to their men...