Cause Marketing

We’ve seen many times that not all cause marketing takes between a company and a cause. But after more than 950 posts it only just now occurs to me that I’ve never given much more than a passing mention to a kind of cause marketing that takes place between a nonprofit cause and another nonprofit. There’s a certain irony to this because I spent the second part of my career at Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals (CMNH) running accounts for four large nonprofit groups that worked to help North America’s children’s hospitals; the service groups Kiwanis and Key Club International, the veteran’s groups the American Legion and the American Legion Auxiliary, Log-a-Load for Kids, a subset of the trade group called the Forest Resources Association, and the fraternal benefit society called Foresters. I was reminded of these sorts of relationships by a press release issued by the Illinois State Bar Association, which recently announced a goal to provide 1 million meals to needy Illinoisans. T...

Huzzahs to Rotary and Kiwanis, the Un-Red While everyone else is fawning over the new Red campaign, your humble servant is reviewing a very local campaign that gathers coats and winter items for the less fortunate here at home. But wait, you’re saying, isn’t this out of character? Aren’t you the one who said that for cause-related marketing campaigns “sponsorship is about eyeballs, [but] the sisters of the orphans and all their charity cousins think it's about tears. When it comes to cause-related marketing, they're only half right.”? Yes I did. And yes I still believe that. But I want to demonstrate that the principles of good cause-related marketing can scale up… as in the global Red campaign… as well as they scale down. This ad, which appeared in the local newspaper on Sunday, November 12, 2006 wrapping the comics page is for Les Schwab , which sells tires. Les Schwab, headquartered in Prineville, Oregon has about 400 outlets in seven western US states. Their prices are com...