Cause Marketing

As of yesterday we are 1/3 of our way through National Breast Cancer Awareness Month 2012 and conspicuous by its absence is the one thing that separates cause marketing from every other kind of tactical marketing, namely genuine emotion. Too few cause marketers get this right during National Breast Cancer Awareness Month. That is, they use the symbols of the month…pink and pink ribbons… as a short hand for the real emotion that surrounds the diagnosis. It’s a simple semiotics problem, in fact. Semiotics, says Merriam-Webster, is “a general philosophical theory of signs and symbols that deals especially with their function in both artificially constructed and natural languages and comprises syntactics, semantics, and pragmatics.” Here’s an example using an English cliché from the American idiom: dumb cause marketing is ‘easier than falling off a log.’ The noun ‘log’ is not actually a log. It’s not even a facsimile of a log like a photograph of a log would be. Instead, it’s an abstract...

A recent trip to the grocery store turned into an opportunity to scope out some packaged goods cause marketing. I started near the bakery side of the store and then made my way to drinks aisle, looking for cause marketing wherever I could find it. Here are 14 that caught my eye.  505 Southwestern This is a simple transactional cause marketing effort that runs year-round. By transactional cause marketing I mean that when you buy the jar, it triggers a donation to an unnamed breast cancer cause (or causes). Normally, this would require the consent of the cause. But since 505 uses only the pink ribbon, which is not trademarked/copyrighted, no permission is required. Although 505 would be prudent to report on its website the amounts donated to which causes. Kitchen Basics Beef Stock This product carries a seal of approval from the American Heart Association. The most famous such seals are the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval and the America...

It’s Memorial Day on Monday in the United States, a Federal holiday that recognizes the men and women who served in the military and died. It’s also fair game for cause marketing around military veterans and causes. Kroger the giant grocery chain, for instance, is running a year-long campaign on behalf of the USO that has a natural inflection point right now. In-stores the campaign shows as a bunch of splashy well-placed signage, plus notices at every checkout counter asking customers to donate to the USO. Regular readers know how much I love those big budget cause marketing campaigns. But, then again, Kroger is a $90 billion (sales) company. They can afford splashy. However, Kroger is the 23 largest company in the Fortune 500. While there’s plenty we can learn from the likes of Kroger, the effort at the left is a little more approachable for most businesses. Here’s the offer: Piano Liquidators will donate 10 percent of proceeds from the week of Monday, May 21 through Monday, May 28...

I write this post from my home office in my basement, which is heated, well-lit and comfortable. The floor beneath my feet is carpeted. Had the basement lacked any of these features, we probably wouldn’t have bought this house. Such amenities are assumed. But as a college student I lived in one of those classic ‘pit’ kinds of apartments. The house was about 100 years old back then and the foundation was made of rock rather than concrete. The basement floor in that old house was compacted dirt. Increasingly cause marketing is assumed as well for companies that face the consumer, notably grocers. This was made clear in several questions the SuperMarketGuru.com asked its 1800-member consumer panel about cause marketing. ‘Guru’ asked four cause marketing questions in addition to its other questions: Were consumers more likely to shop in a supermarket that supports causes? Would consumers be tolerant of price increases that allow for donations? Were consumers likely to travel further to sh...

Kroger’s Giving Hope a Hand campaign, an anti-breast cancer effort is gaining momentum for much the same reasons that General Mills’ Boxtops for Education and Campbell’s Labels for Education have; it’s opened up the effort to other brands. That is, Giving Hope a Hand… like Campbell’s Labels for Education and General Mills Boxtops for Education… has made the leap from its exclusive relationship with Kroger to including the participation of other brands, including Dannon’s Activa brand of yogurt, Freschetta pizza, Kraft cheese, Pepsi, Purina, Windex, and Ziploc, among others. (Parenthetically, it’s interesting to note that other Dannon brands participate in Labels for Education. Ziploc also participates in Boxtops for Education! Kraft, of course, also does a prominent cause marketing effort on behalf of Feeding America). At the left are the front and back panels of a box of Keebler’s Town House crackers that I saw in December 2011, but which certainly predated that time period. The Keeb...

Now through November 11, 2011 participating IGA stores across the United States are offering $0.05 to the Wounded Warrior Project for each case of certain private label food brands sold. This is an echo of a similar effort from participating IGA stores undertook for the Wounded Warrior Project from Memorial Day last May through Labor Day earlier this month. Only instead of private label foods it was for cases of IGA private label water and the donation amount was $0.10 per case. In turn, that seemed influenced by a campaign Kroger did for breast cancer research in October 2010. IGA is a huge buying and distribution cooperative for 5,000 member stores in 40 countries. The Wounded Warrior Project is a nonprofit charity that raises money and awareness for the nation’s injured service members. I became aware of this effort via a news announcement from the IGA in tiny Wendell, North Carolina, east of Raleigh. I’ve been agitating for private label cause marketing in these pages since Nov...

On Wednesdays in my market all the major grocers insert their flyer in the local newspaper. Yesterday all of them save WalMart had a cause marketing element in their respective flyers. Here’s a review of each: Smith’s is owned by grocery giant Kroger, WalMart’s largest domestic grocery competitor. Their campaign benefits the USO, the charity that aids members of the military and their families and now celebrating its 70th anniversary. The USO reusable bag is an extension of a campaign for the USO Kroger announced in July, 2011 . Participating stores have coin donation canisters at check stands and/or ask customers to round up their purchases to the nearest dollar to benefit the USO. The full campaign lasts one year with a goal of raising $1 million. A limited promotion with Procter & Gamble has already generated $250,000. In addition, the #47 Kroger NASCAR features USO branding this season and Kroger locations with medical clinics called ‘The Little Clinic’ donated $1 for each spor...

In my wallet are cards and keyfobs for a half-dozen loyalty programs from the sophisticated, like SkyMiles and Marriott Rewards and a couple grocery chains to several no-tech buy 10 get one free punch cards from a bakery and a couple of restaurants. Your wallet or handbag probably holds a similar variety of rewards cards. But is there a potential match between loyalty programs and cause marketing? Marketing superstar Coke, which runs the gigantic MyCokeRewards.com rewards program, has placed its bet. Now to be clear, label redemption efforts from Campbell’s, the Boxtops for Education campaign from General Mills and others are both loyalty and cause marketing programs. But MyCokeRewards was founded as an effort to reward Coke purchasers, not their favored causes. At the left is an ad that ran in the 15 August, 2011 issue of People magazine. Register your school at mycokerewards.com/sprite and it could receive a $25,000 grant to become a ‘Sprite Spark Park.’ Formatted as a ...

Smith’s Food and Drug is in the middle of its annual campaign for Primary Children’s Medical Center , a key part of which is this paper icon. I purchased mine for $1 on Saturday, May 7, 2011. Since 1992 Smith’s, a 130-store unit of the grocery giant Kroger , has donated more than $7.6 million to Primary, one of only a handful of Trauma One pediatric hospitals in the country, and the only such hospital in its service area, which includes parts of Utah, Idaho, Nevada, Wyoming, and Montana. Smith’s donation to Primary in 2010 was $1 million and $837,000 in 2009 , signaling the regard with which Primary is held in the local community as well as Smith’s skill at fundraising, even in the face of an economic downturn. The paper icon is large, more than 6½” in diameter, and in full color. The back is blank except for a black and white UPC code. The clerk dutifully asked me if I wanted to buy the icon. The credit card machine had a coordinated paper surround that also promoted the campaign. ...

This paper icon… which I purchased for $1 at Bashas’, an Arizona grocery chain… made it very clear to me that charities doing paper icon cause marketing campaigns are going to need to differentiate or risk being commoditized out of existence by the retailers themselves. The full-color icon benefits a new orangutan enclosure at the Phoenix Zoo. The icon is 5½” x 8½” and was sitting on the checkout counter. I couldn’t see any hanging in the store in Mesa, Arizona where I bought it or any other kind of collateral material explaining the campaign. Nor did the clerk try to “sell” me the icon or amplify any aspect of the campaign. The back of the paper icon was blank. But I was impressed that the icon featured the beneficiary, a cute little orangutan. Too many charities are still selling sneakers and balloons and shamrocks even though their beneficiaries are adorable little human children. Bashas’, which has done paper icon campaigns for other charities, seems to have learned some lessons in...

For several years now I’ve been agitating for cause marketing for retailer’s house brands. Now I’ve finally seen one from Kroger benefiting breast cancer research. Here’s my argument; in recessions house brands do very well. But once the hard times are over, consumers return to the name brands. But if a cause marketing effort could help a retailer preserve even 5 percent of the customers that switched during the recession, it could potential be worth tens of millions to the bottom line every year. I originally made my case for house brand cause marketing back in a post on November 18, 2008. In the declining economy, people in the UK, the US and elsewhere are buying more ‘house brands.’ Of course they are, you say. What could make more sense than to get the same-quality or nearly the same quality for a meaningful savings? I don’t have a handy chart to demonstrate, but this is what always happens in bad economic times. When the economy dips, sales of cheaper house brands and generics tak...

It’s no secret that cause-related marketing is typically aimed at consumers. But that doesn’t mean that the sales relationship from manufacturer to consumer is direct. The Internet notwithstanding, most manufacturers require sales channel partners. Sometimes more than one. For instance, the delivery of the O-Cedar mop you bought at your neighborhood grocery store was probably enabled not directly by Fredenberg Household Products (which owns O-Cedar), but by a third-party manufacture’s rep, who made sure the product was on the shelf and well displayed and that the annual spring cleaning special pricing is properly executed. Moreover, in the last 15 years ago in the United States the balance of power shifted from the manufacturers to the retailers. Retailers realized that the 15 feet on shelf space they might give a product… in store that can only carry so many SKUs… is foot-for-foot the most valuable real estate in America. Hence the rise of slotting fees and the like. So if you’re a ma...

Excuse me while I coin a phrase; “open source cause-related marketing.” In effect General Mills has turned its Box Tops for Education campaign into an open source cause marketing campaign. I realized this as I walked into Sam’s Club the other day and was handed the handbill above. On the front it details a small promotion for earning bonus Box Tops. On the backside it lists 33 items available in Sam’s Club that participate in Boxtops for Education. But here’s the kicker, they’re not all General Mills products. As I noted in my April 3, 2007 posting, General Mills opened up Box Tops to other non-competing brands in 2006. What wasn’t apparent to me then was the degree to which General Mills has pulled its own branding from the Box Tops campaign. Notice that General Mills name and logo are conspicuously absent from the Box Tops logo. If you go to the Box Tops for Education website you’ll find General Mills in the fact sheet. But otherwise its presence is largely confined to a small copyri...