Cause Marketing

Download a free app for your Android or Apple mobile device and start uploading pictures to DonateaPhoto.com , and the sponsor, Johnson & Johnson, will donate $1 per pic per day to your choice of Save the Children, Safe Kids Worldwide, or Keep America Beautiful. It took me a couple of beats to realize that Johnson & Johnson, the sponsor of the app and the site, is just seeding a photosharing site. I was looking for the angle… the value in having a bunch of people’s snapshots… but it doesn’t appear to be anything more tricksy than just a photosharing site. Why photosharing? Because as my friend John Haydon notes in a post from last Fall , among the many flavors of social networking, photosharing is blowing up, especially with the 18-29 demo. It’s also slightly more popular with women than men. This is exactly the people J&J wants to be in front of, even if it's a very soft sell. DonateaPhoto.com denominates their donation in terms of specific improvements; newborns...

The Reputation Institute and the Boston College Center for Corporate Citizenship recently released their list of the top 50 companies in the United States in terms of corporate social responsibility. In the survey of public opinion, the top ten were: Google Campbell Soup Johnson & Johnson Walt Disney Kraft Foods General Mills Levi Strauss UPS Berkshire Hathaway Microsoft I took the list and ranked the 50 according to the amount of cause marketing that I’m aware of from each company. 0 meant that I had never seen any cause marketing from them. 1 meant I’m aware of cause marketing promotions about once a year. 2 meant I’m aware of perhaps two cause marketing promotions a year. 3 meant I’m aware of perhaps monthly cause marketing promotions in a year. 4 meant I’m aware of the company’s cause marketing as often as once a week 5 meant I'm aware of cause marketing from the company on a daily basis. Of the 50 companies, the only one I was unaware of was Express Scripts, a pharmacy s...