Cause Marketing

On Tuesday, Feb 14, 2012 in my post about activating cause marketing efforts, I wrote: “...basically all cause marketing has a PR component whether or not there’s also any bought or owned media.” So how does that work? On the left is a newspaper clipping from earlier this month that tells the story of the donation from Firehouse Subs Public Safety Foundation to the local fire department. Firehouse Subs is a sandwich chain with more than 450 units in 20 or so states. Firehouse Subs Public Safety Foundation makes grants to public safety agencies within the service area of the chain. The Foundation is public charity, meaning it can take donations from anyone. But a big chunk of the donations are generated when the Firehouse Subs stores sell 5-gallon plastic buckets for $2 each. All the buckets formerly held the pickles that Firehouse Subs puts on its sandwiches. Cool idea. The article appeared in a community-style newspaper called the Sandy Journal , a freebie with a circulation of 36,60...

The direct sales business… think Amway, Avon, and Shaklee… has a demographics problem, namely attracting the next generation of sales reps. Avon has addressed the challenge by launching Mark , which targets 18-30 year olds with bright, fun, less expensive products than Avon’s mainstream line and sold by youthful reps using a heavy dose of social media. Mark has proven to be a good extension for Avon. A January 2010 story in the New York Times on Mark put annual sales at $70 million and numbered sales reps at around 40,000 in North America. Like Avon, Mark has a cause attached to it. But, as I’ve demonstrated before in this space , in the United States breast cancer, Avon’s signature cause, is pretty rare for women under age 30. So Mark chose domestic violence instead. Its own charity, called m.powerment, donates to causes working to end domestic violence. In the iteration at the left, when you buy the necklace worn by Twilight star Ashley Greene, proceeds benefit m.powerment and its...

Earthjustice , a nonprofit environmental law firm used Foursquare to squeeze data out of participating commuters and a $50,000 donation from an anonymous donor. But the Foursquare promotion didn't pull you into Earthjustice’s offices in Oakland, California. Instead, the promotion invited commuters to check in at four donated billboards spread across the Bay Area Rapid Transit system. The check-ins triggered a $10 donation up to a maximum of $50,000. More than 5,700 commuters checked in at the ads and the donation goal was met. That’s one of the ads at the left. I like the use of Foursquare in this effort and I know that as a marketer I’d love to get my hands on all the data Foursquare collects. But The New York Times is touting this as the new hotness for Foursquare and nonprofits. I’m dubious. When you check in at Foursquare at, say, Sarah’s Shake Shack, there’s a chance to physically engage with the brand: eat the product, for instance, or meetup with friends. Foursquare also ...

On Monday The New York Times profiled a new cause marketing effort from a maker of healthy snacks and do-gooder Daniel Lubetzky, who owns Kind Healthy Snacks. Lubetzky has a small problem. Some of his competitors, including Snickers Bars from confection giant Mars Incorporated, are also using cause marketing to sell their own snack lines. The Times reporter, Stuart Elliott, never puts it this directly but the logical question is inescapable. If you're a consumer-facing company with a commitment to cause marketing is it a good thing if your competitors are utilizing cause marketing, too? All of us who have been involved in cause marketing for more than a decade or so remember that one of our primary sales points to prospects was that cause marketing helps you distinguish your product or service from competitors and gives you a new story to tell customers and the press. Increasingly that advantage is disappearing. (The result is a lament like the Gotterdammerung some Americans fe...

Along with David Hessekiel of the Cause Marketing Forum, I was quoted in the April 2009 issue of Pizza Today on the subject of cause marketing (the article "Just Cause" begins on page 55.) It’s not the New York Times , to be sure. But there’s an interesting side benefit to being quoted in Pizza Today ; you get a special voucher that’s accepted at most small pizza parlors across the country that allows you to get extra cheese on your pizzas for free. I plan on giving it a try tonight!

Wind-Powered Cause Marketing As I write this, I don’t know exactly where the electricity that powers my computer comes from. I live in Utah and a good deal of electrical power is generated from locally-mined coal. So it could have come from a relatively dirty source like that. I’m about five miles away from a canyon stream where there’s been a small hydroelectric plant for more than 80 years. Environmentally-speaking, that’s quite clean. Moreover, this part of the American West is dotted with super-sized hydroelectric plants. So it could have come from one of those sources, too. Or maybe a nuclear or solar power plant. Illustrated above is an interesting cause-related marketing and sweepstakes campaign from Silk , the soymilk which is positioned against its competition in two main ways. The first is that it’s kept in the refrigerator case near the dairy milk and thereby tastes more like cow’s milk. Soymilk doesn't have to be refrigerated. Silk, in fact has a line of soymilk that i...