Cause Marketing

Tuesday found me in a meeting with a new client. We were talking about cause marketing and I asked if they would like to see any data or research on the value of cause marketing in your marketing mix. I keep a digital portfolio of such information at the ready. “For who?” he asked. “For your sales group or your management team,” I said. “Nope,” he replied. “We don’t need it.” Now my client is a sophisticated marketer with gray at his temples and decades of experience at strategic and tactical marketing. For my part, I’ve been involved with cause marketing to some degree or another for coming up on 20 years now but on Tuesday I realized for the first time that cause marketing has reached its tipping point. Cause marketing has become ‘the man.’ I use the catchphrase ‘tipping point’ deliberately, if reluctantly. Before Malcolm Gladwell popularized it, it was pretty much reserved for use by epidemiologists to describe the point at which a viral outbreak becomes an epidemic. Still, that’s w...

This blog received notice yesterday that it has been named "100 Best Blogs for Those Who Want to Change the World" by the website Bestuniversities.com . That puts me in the company of Gladwell , Godin , the U.N. , Kiva.org , Treehugger.com , and dozens of others. From the opening paragraph: "The world is full of visionaries and people who want to make a difference in the world, and many of those people share their knowledge online through their blogs. Whether you want to change the world through environment, humanitarianism, business, or any other way, there’s a blog out there that can offer you guidance and inspiration. Read on, and you’ll find 100 blogs that can help you change the world." If I was H.L Mencken , or Twain , or even Groucho Marx , I'd write something snarky right now about 'not wanting to be a member of a club that would have me for a member.' Instead, I'll say thank you, Bestuniversities.com. That's very nice!

Using Customer Satisfaction to Find Donors I sat in on a very interesting presentation last week at the Wasatch Online Marketers Association (WOMA) by Ryan Davies of Progrexion , a multi-disciplinary marketing and marketing research firm with offices in San Francisco and Utah. One of Progrexion’s house specialties is customer satisfaction surveys, one of the more dreary (if necessary) parts of marketing research. You know what I mean if you’ve ever been subjected to a customer satisfaction survey that runs 4 pages single-spaced in about 9-point type. Completing those surveys can be like that scene in the Dustin Hoffman movie Marathon Man when Sir Lawrence Olivier plays the Mengele-like ex-Nazi dentist Dr. Christian Szell who extracts information along with teeth. But Progrexion draws from the work of author and Bain consultant Fred Reichheld to come up with a much more streamlined and painless approach. Reichheld wrote the 2006 book “The Ultimate Question: Driving Good Profits and Tru...