Cause Marketing

Imagine that a sponsor and a cause engage in a sincere and well-meant cause marketing activity and out of carelessness they word the offer poorly in the activation materials. Perhaps the amount being donated is really oblique or seems to suggest something that isn’t true. And then some enterprising attorney launches lawsuit and he or she finds a sympathetic judge to certify it as a class-action. This very scenario came up in a discussion group at the Cause Academy convocation last week in Scottsdale, Arizona. On this topic, we concluded two things as a group: That it will probably happen in the near future That it will have the effect of ensuring that cause marketers everywhere make their campaigns more transparent In my view, it will also have a chilling effect on cause marketing as a whole. Here’s why: Some of the biggest charities, names we all know, are sitting on hundreds of millions of dollars in reserve. There are many legitimate reasons why nonprofits keep money in reser...

Short post today… I’m still muzzy from the Thanksgiving feast. But I'm not too groggy to deliver a cause marketing post that is directly related to today, Black Friday 2012. During the Black Friday sales event at Macy’s today through Sunday, the retailer will donate $10 for every bottle of Lady Gaga ‘Fame’ fragrance sold. Also, for everyone that takes a photo in a Macy’s store and posts it to Twitter with the hashtag #macysBTWF, the company will donate another $5. The money goes to Lady Gaga’s Born This Way Foundation . The total donation is capped at $250,000. To me the challenge for this effort is in how to activate the campaign. I got a press release from Macy’s PR staff. But even Macy’s doesn’t have the social media reach that Lady Gaga herself does. Gaga currently has 31.4 million followers on Twitter. In addition to her website she has a social media website devoted to her fan base called LittleMonsters.com. The site, which takes its name from Gaga’s name for her fans...

~Let's Put Her to Work Paying Down the Deficit! ~ Currently on newsstands is Forbes magazine’s '100 Most Powerful Women' issue and there at number 11 is Lady Gaga, whose blurb tells us that she is 25, that she ‘banked $90 million last year’ and ‘raised $202 million to fight HIV/AIDS through MAC’s VIVA GLAM Lipstick and Lipgloss sales.” Holy Simoleans, Batman. $202 million?!!! That makes Lady Gaga the most effective single cause marketer ever given that she’s only been in the public eye for about three years. How did I miss this amazing cause marketing story? In fact, the truth is a little ‘more nuanced,’ as the politicians like to say, even if Gaga may really turn out to be among the greatest cause marketers ever. John Demsey, group president of The Estee Lauder Companies, which has owned MAC since 1997 and who chairs the MAC AIDS campaign, introduced some reality in an interview with the Wall Street Journal recorded February 18, 2011. The MAC AIDS Fund raises money for p...

17-year-old Canadian heartthrob Justin Bieber wants you to buy his new perfume line called Someday , and when you do all net profits “after taxes, royalties, expenses and company requirements are deducted” will go to Pencils of Promise, a school-building charity and the Make-A-Wish Foundation. Bieber’s promotional partner for Someday, a New York outfit called Give Back Brands , promises to donate its Someday profits to “restoring after-school programs” and “school food programs.” Someday appears to be Give Back’s only product right now. But this isn’t just a straight transactional cause marketing promotion. Instead, Bieber has split the middle between a straight-ahead cause marketing promotion and an all-benefits brand of the type that Rachael Ray uses in her dog food line called Nutrish. It’s hard to say whether or not Bieber is making any scratch on this deal. Royalties is one way celebrities make money from endorsements. But I’m willing to give him the benefit of a doubt. ...