Cause Marketing

I Stand Corrected Two recent comments about my review of the Montblanc-Nicholas Cage ads that ran in numerous financial magazines made me revisit my posting . I feel good about what I wrote about transparency and nonprofits, but I got an important detail completely wrong. I misidentified the nonprofit in question as "Heal the Boy," which I couldn't find. See the announcement of the Montblanc-Nicholas Cage relationship here . In fact, Cage and Montblanc are supporting " Heal the Bay ," an environmental organization that works to improve Southern California's coastal waters, especially the Santa Monica Bay. My mistake and my apologies to all concerned. And thanks to our alert readers for catching the error.

Seeing Through The Wicker Man Darkly It’s almost impossible to overstate how much transparency matters in cause-related marketing. It’s more important than the campaign's creative. It’s more important than the offer in the campaign's advertising. It’s more important than the appeal being made. Here’s why. Americans are a ridiculously generous people when it comes to charitable giving. Much of that generosity is directly attributable to our tax laws, which encourage charitable giving. Part of it is attributable to the thinness of the public welfare net in the U.S., as compared to Europe or Japan. Some it can be attributed to our native “communal self-government,” first highlighted in Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America back in 1840. What powers all that is trust. Americans trust charities almost implicitly. Even when they’re skeptical they trust that the Congress and the IRS, along with state and local regulators, will keep charity noses clean. And the IRS and the state...