Cause Marketing

The title of this post is a clause I never expected to put together. An enterprising entrepreneur named Renata M. Black is selling women’s thongs to benefit microenterprises in the United States, Brazil and India. Empowered By You panties are seamless thong-style panties available at a handful of online and bricks and mortar outlets. Sales of the panties benefit the Seven Bar Foundation, whose mission is to support female microenterprise.  The ad… from the October 2012 issue of More magazine… is kind of a hot mess. Although it’s so sexy, you might not ever notice. Plainly the model is breaking through the glass ceiling to where the men are. But how is it that she’s “Empowered” by said ceiling, I can’t get guess. A paragraph at www.empoweredbyyou.com explains the visual like this: “In the spirit of liberating the superhero in all of us, it is only a natural fit that every Empowered By You panty empowers women with their first break to make it. Instead of a ‘cape’ she i...

It’s prime auto show season right now across the country. The two biggest shows, the Detroit auto show is going on right now, while the Chicago show is coming up in early February. My home state’s much more modest show took place last weekend. (At left is a Subaru, which offers its own cause marketing effort called Share the Love .) All of which begs the question, how might auto shows utilize cause marketing in their promotional mix? Here’s a few ideas: Imagine a Rosy the Riveter kind of look with messaging that says, in effect, "Let's put the State/Region back to work." Then in partnership with local micro-lenders when someone gets approved for a micro-loan during the promotional period, they are also entered into a drawing for a truck/car for their business from the car show’s sponsoring dealer’s association. The drawing, of course, would take place during the car show in front of a lot of cameras. If you really wanted to doll it up, you could present it as a version of...

We’ve all seen paper icons that sell for $1. A few sell for $5 and fewer still for $10. But how’s this for ambition from Whole Foods Market ? The top listed price for their paper icon is $180. Talk about ‘whole paycheck!’ Sorry that was a cheap (and irresistible) shot at Whole Foods which has turned out a very well-thought out and well-executed paper icon campaign. Probably the best one I’ve seen in the last five years. The campaign benefits the microcredit effort of Whole Foods’ Whole Planet Foundation . The Foundation partners with microfinace partners in 29 countries in the developing world, with an emphasis on regions that supply product to Whole Foods. By design most of the microenterprise loans go to women. The fit, therefore, is very clear. Microfinance when coupled with microenterprise, has a good success record at lifting people out of poverty worldwide even if it isn’t a panacea, and remains widely respected in America. The icon uses both sides, which I always recommend. In t...