Cause Marketing

Kohl’s the Milwaukee-based department store with about 1130 stores in 49 states has raised $180 million for kids’ education and health through its cause marketing efforts, and with this ad in their weekly flyer they’re bragging a little. That’s not an unrivaled amount of money for a company to generate via product sales cause marketing: VIVA GLAM is now north of $225 million in funding for HIV/AIDS; Newman’s Own is over $300 million; Geoffrey Beene is right around $150 million. (Comment below with anyone I've missed). But all those cause marketers had a jump on Kohl’s. VIVA GLAM and Geoffrey Beene both started their cause marketing efforts in 1994. Newman’s Own was founded in 1982. By contrast, Kohl’s Care’s for Kids was launched in the year 2000. Maybe a small brag isn’t out of line! After all, like the great pitcher Dizzy Dean…the last Major Leaguer to win 30 games in a season…famously said, “It ain’t bragging if you can back it up.” Kohl’s can plainly back it up. Where does ...

Versatile action star and Broadway song-and-dance man Hugh Jackman has started a new ‘all-benefits company’ that he explicitly says was inspired by Newman’s Own. Here’s five bits of entirely unsolicited cause marketing advice to Mr. Jackman from yours truly. 1. Put Your Face On the Packaging. I don’t know what Laughing Man means and probably most of your potential customers don’t either. Speaking of Newman and yourself, you told Entertainment Weekly magazine, “This is a really great to, uh, exploit your popularity, basically. It is shameless exploitation.” Except the name Laughing Man is hardly shameless exploitation of your celebrity. To really be shameless and to get the most bang for your buck, you need to put the face of one of World’s Most Beautiful People on the packaging of Laughing Man. 2. Turn Your Face Into a Caricature. Brands including Betty Crocker, Uncle Ben, KFC, the Quaker Oats Quaker dude and even Paul Newman are all represented by illustrated characters. Betty Croc...

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. ...

In its most recent edition, The Checkout , the publishing outlet for research developed by The Integer Group, asked Americans an intriguing cause marketing question: “When choosing between two companies that each benefit a cause and sell the same product, similar in price and quality, which of the following would influence your preference for one brand over another.” Let’s put some flesh on that. The question asks, in effect, when do you buy Progresso soup and when do buy Campbell’s soup, given that they both benefit education causes? Or when do you buy Yoplait yogurt and when do you buy Dannon yogurt, each of which generates funds for separate breast cancer charities? No surprise, but ‘Personal Relevance of Cause’ was the top answer for both men and women, polling out around 70 percent (the graph was formatted such that exact percentages are hard to determine). The most surprising answer for me was the second most common answer. About 33 percent of men said that “Donates With Every P...

One of the most confounding charitable endeavors I was ever involved in was figuring out how to fund a startup charity that made grants to other charities. HelpUsAdopt.org, founded in 2007, is in a similar boat. The 501(c)(3) foundation grants would-be adoptive parents up to $15,000 for adoption expenses. In short, they raise money to give it away. Included in their fundraising mix are gala-type events, annual donor solicitation, and a small catalog of products including the necklace and bracelets modeled in the ad at the left by actress Nia Vardalos, of My Big Fat Greek Wedding fame. The necklace Nia is wearing in this ad from the June 2011 Redbook magazine goes for $225 and the bracelets for $35 each. The HelpUsAdopt.org store also currently sells a brown wooden bead necklace for $95 and a tote bag for $20. The nonprofit fundraising world is set up to favor established charities, and with good reason. IRS figures show that 16 percent of nonprofit charities that filed a 990 tax re...

Outdoor advertising companies have an expression about signs that are so busy the message can’t be taken in one glance. They call such signs, ‘park and reads.’ The usual rule of thumb for billboard is that they have no more than 8-10 words and fewer than 4 lines of text. Total. But of course many people either don’t know or think the rule doesn’t apply to them. You see such signs all the time, although the one below probably has a subject matter you’ve never before seen on a billboard. The ad above, from the March 31, 2011 Fortune magazine, is a park and read from the fashion designer Geoffrey Beene. The ad features Ann and Nancy Wilson of the 70s and 80s rock group Heart along with two cancer researchers, Marion Knott, MD, PhD and Raymond DuBois, MD, PhD. There’s no arguing with the intent of this PSA campaign or the sincerity of GBGB (Geoffrey Beene Gives Back) from Geoffrey Beene, LLC. All profits from operations fund a wide array of philanthropic endeavors. GBGB is basically Newma...

Borders appears headed for bankruptcy. Blockbuster filed for bankruptcy protection back in September 2010. Circuit City is gone. Ultimate Electronics is about to fade into the dust heap of failed electronics retailers. And I’m having a hard time finding any current signs of life of the hot jeans brand PRVCY Premium , whose distinctive back-pocket stitching adorned the patooshkas of starlets like Selena Gomez, Taylor Swift, Paris Hilton, Christina Applegate, Jennifer Lopez, Miley Cyrus, and Jessica Alba. PRVCY was founded by Carolyn Jones in 2002. Blockbuster did some great cause marketing back in the day with Children’s Miracle Network . Borders still touts its community giving programs, with a special emphasis on literacy causes . I posted in this space on one of Circuit City's cause marketing efforts. I'll bet Ultimate Electronics had active community outreach programs as well. Here’s what PRVCY Premium’s website says about its purpose . “The company was founded with a n...

Rachael Ray , the TV personality and chef, and now, brand, is so cute that I’m not sure that if I met her in person that I could stop myself from pinching the cheeks on her face. I admire her life story , which while not exactly hardscrabble, nonetheless demonstrates unusual determination and hard work. Good for her and all her success. She earned it. I can also commend her as a generous philanthropis t . If one word signifies her brand it’s the first word of the copy in the ad to the left; ‘Simple.’ She made her name and reputation with 30-minute meals. When she cooks she measures nothing, and her recipes are almost insouciant. She cooks like an Italian grandmother, only her dimples are a whole lot cuter. But when you become a brand and your brand is ‘Simple’ with a capital-S it’s easy to take simple pretty seriously. That’s what’s wrong with this ad for her line of dog food that benefits animal welfare groups including the North Shore Animal League and the ASPCA . Good on her. But j...

To get into Harvard, jewelry designer Joan Hornig made a deal not with the devil, but with her better angels : if she got in, she told herself, by the time she was 50 she would give away all her earnings to charity. She does just that with her eponymous jewelry line sold on her website and at retail outlets like Bergdorf Goodman. Like other ‘ all benefits ’ companies, 100 percent of her profits… year-round… are donated to charity. When you purchase it online, you designate where you’d like the donation to go. Hornig also does exclusive lines for retailers that benefit predetermined charities. For instance the earrings above are from her Snowflake line at Bergdorf, which benefited UNICEF.  Hornig's jewelry is priced in the ‘if you gotta ask, you can’t afford it’ range. It goes without saying that not everyone could manage this. Town & Country  magazine reports that Hornig is independently wealthy. But the appeal to would-be consumers is mighty. How easy it would be...

After a private battle, Paul Newman passed away from lung cancer on Friday, September 26, 2008 surrounded by family and friends. He will be remembered as a splendid actor, a competitive professional race car driver, a political activist, philanthropist and accidental leader. But I’ll remember him as the preeminent face of cause-related marketing in our day. (And certainly as the star of my favorite Western, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid . See left with Katharine Ross). On a lark in 1982 along with his neighbor and friend writer A.E. Hotchner, Newman started selling salad dressing that they called Newman’s Own. Later they added pasta sauce, popcorn, salsa, wine, cookies, among many other items, to the line. The labels featured jokey caricatures of Newman and the pledge that 100 percent of the proceeds from the venture, after taxes, would be donated to charity. From its founding through 2007, Newman’s Own had donated more than $220 million to charity. Last year’s charitable donation...

In my never-ending quest to root out new cause-related marketing buzzwords, I came across this one: “all-benefits companies.” It means companies that are in business to give away all their distributable profits after expenses and profits. Newman’s Own is a prominent example, but I came across the expression on the website for PeaceKeeper Cause-Metics. We all know the story of Newman’s Own. Paul Newman and his friend, author A.E. Hotchner whipped up a batch of salad dressing and sold it to neighbors. It was an instant and unlikely success… as a funny little slide show on the company website explains… that led to an extensive food product line. Since 1982 Newman’s Own has given more than $200 million to charity. According to its website, PeaceKeeper has set a very similar goal for itself. PeaceKeeper sells a line of mineral makeup including lipstick, lip gloss, lip balm, and nail polish. The products, PeaceKeeper tells us, are made without a long list of harmful (usually artificial) ch...