Cause Marketing

Preliminary estimates suggest that voter turnout in yesterday’s general election in the United States was several million short of 2008. But don’t blame the nation’s quick-serve restaurants, which took all kinds of cause marketing-style measures to encourage Americans to exercise their franchise. Here’s a few examples. Tim Horton’s offered a free donut to anyone who purchased any beverage while sporting an ‘I Voted’ sticker. Horton’s also surprised voters at polling locations in Ohio, Michigan and Buffalo, New York with free coffee/lattes and donuts/muffins. On election day you could get a free taco at California Tortilla locations along the East Coast when your showed your ‘I Voted’ sticker, no purchase necessary.  Select locations of LaMar’s Donuts in Colorado, Kansas and Nebraska offered a free donut to people wearing the ‘I Voted’ sticker. In the lead-up to the election LaMar’s promoted a straw poll of voters as activated by donuts shaped like either a donkey (re...

For a short while signs have appeared that seem to suggest that a company’s halo shines just as brightly whether they sponsor a transactional cause marketing effort as when they just make a lump sum pre-donation and promote it. Cone’s most recent Cause Evolution study found that people are only slightly more favorably inclined towards companies employing transactional cause marketing (53%) than to lump sum charitable donations (47%). Transactional cause marketing is when the sponsor ties its donation directly to a purchase. Cone’s survey amplifies a small experiment highlighted in the book, “Yes: 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive,” by Goldstein, Martin, Cialdini, which had a similar finding. But these studies make me itchy and uncomfortable, like a wool sweater in Indian Summer. It could be self-interest that gives me the itch. I make my living helping causes and companies put together effective cause marketing campaigns, after all, not showing people how to wri...

Been thinking a lot about the topic of transactional cause marketing versus publicized corporate charitable donations. Cone’s most recent Cause Evolution study found that people are only slightly more favorably inclined towards companies employing transactional cause marketing (53%) than to lump sum charitable donations (47%). Transactional cause marketing is when the sponsor ties its donation to a purchase. Cone’s survey comes on the heals of a small study highlighted in the 2008 book, “Yes: 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive,” by Goldstein, Martin, Cialdini. In this instance, the authors test what amounts to a cause marketing approach to persuade guests in a hotel to reuse the towels in their room. They test a transactional cause marketing approach: “reuse their towels and the hotel will make a donation to an environmental cause.” But they found it no more effective than the card left in the room simply asking people to reuse their towels for the sake of the environment. ...

Just last night my youngest asked me what my favorite thing to do was when I was her age. I grew up on the edge of the Sonoran Desert and outside our home near a crossroads was a large mound of brush several hundred feet across that was home to all manner of desert animals, reptiles and insects. Many is the hour I spent watching creatures crawl in to and out of that mound. To this day I remember vividly a grisly encounter between a rattlesnake and a roadrunner, where, as in the Warner Brothers’ cartoon, the roadrunner emerged unscathed. In short, I didn't suffer from what author Richard Louv has called ‘Nature Deficit Disorder.’ But in his 2005 book ‘Last Child in the Woods,’ Louv describes the possible effects: Limited respect for natural surroundings Attention deficit disorders, depressions, mood disorders, and poor grades. Childhood obesity. So far, no medical manual recognizes Nature Deficit Disorder, but the outdoor products company The North Face does and is ...

Not all cause marketing is meant to get directly you to buy something. Sometimes it’s meant to get you to try something you might not otherwise consider. In this instance, AAA of Northern California, an auto club that also includes the states of Nevada and Utah, wants their members to see how competitive their auto insurance rates are. And the offer is almost ripped from the headlines of today’s news. When you call for an auto insurance quote, AAA of Northern California will make a $5 donation to unnamed groups that support state parks in California, Nevada, and Utah, up to a total of $100,000.  Although all three states are facing budgetary pressures in the downturn, the Golden State has been especially hard hit. California has plans to shutter as many as 70 of the state’s 279 state parks on July 1, 2012. Aside from the timeliness, this cause marketing promotion is an especially close fit between AAA and the cause. Members of auto clubs, it goes almost without saying...

I’m a little chary about making sweeping pronouncements, but I believe I've just seen the first cause marketing promotion in the U.S. involving a prescription drug. The drug is from Allergan and it’s called Latisse , “the first and only FDA-approved prescription treatment for inadequate or not enough eyelashes.” The medical name for this condition is hypotrichosis. Latisse is lifestyle drug the way Viagra or Propecia are. That is, no one’s going to die (except, perhaps, of embarrassment) if their erectile dysfunction or male pattern baldness or thin eyelashes go untreated. Which means the positioning for a product like Latisse is a little tricky. Allergan could have gone with the sexy route as with Viagra or Cialis and showed lovely women batting their new longer, thicker, darker eyelashes. But I’ll bet that approach didn’t test well with women. (I’m reminded of a joke about the Cialis ads from a comedian whose name I can’t recall. He said, “Hey if my erection lasts longer than ...

It was my initial intent to shower praise on the cool The Bread Art Project, sponsored by The Grain Foods Foundation , a trade group, and benefiting the domestic anti-hunger charity Feeding America , (aka America's Second Harvest) But I can’t. The Grain Foods Foundation will donate $50,000 and as much as another $50,000 based on the number of Bread Art submissions. When I visited the counter said 10,433 donations had been made. It’s a fun promotion. When you go to breadartproject.com you can create a piece of bread that toasts a picture or an image of your design. As things load, there’s a stream of nutrition and hunger facts. When you save the Bread Art image, and enter your name and email address, a dollar goes to Feeding America. A pity there’s was no way to forward your image to friends or post it to your Facebook page. At least I don’t think it had the capability. I created my Bread Art image easily enough. But so far as I know the image was never saved and the donation was n...

Hell has officially frozen over. Boston law firm Sherin & Lodgen announced on Friday, Nov. 15 that during 2009 it will discount 15 percent from its standard rates to clients housed in buildings which are existing or registered LEED certified. As I’ve pointed out before, cause marketing is about motivating certain behaviors. Usually it involves money going to a cause. However, there are plenty of examples of non-transactional cause marketing like this around. But a law firm promoting that will discount its prices? Sacrebleu! De telles choses ne sont pas faites. Such things are not done. Now, truth be told, you could probably go into Sherin & Lodgen… or darn near any other law firm… and negotiate a 15 percent discount off of standard rates and not even break a sweat. Especially given the current economy. But reputable, non-ambulance-chasing law firms don’t ever talk openly about discounting and they certainly don’t issue a press release about it. Someone call the ethics secti...

Plus 3 Network wants to turn your “sweat equity into social capital,” and they’re using a non transactional form of cause marketing to do it. Here’s what that means: You register at Plus 3, a kind of social media network, and then keep an online log of all your workouts. Each mile you train… mainly running, walking and biking… translates to a small donation paid for by sponsors to a select group of charities. Certain training activities are also awarded with prizes or rewards like chain lube or training socks. So you get fitter and maybe some new socks, the sponsor gets the usual benefits of cause marketing and the charity gets a donation. Of course, Plus 3 gets something out of it too. It’s a cause marketing triple play. The donations are higher when you upload the data from a GPS enabled device than if you make a hand entry. For instance, walking pays out $.05 a mile when uploaded from Garmin GPS device, but just $.0167 when you hand enter the data. Plus 3 says this is because the...

Repeat after me: cause-related marketing is not always about the money. You know what I mean. We tend to think of cause marketing as a transaction. You buy a carton of Yoplait yogurt, lick the lid, send it in and a dime goes to the Susan G Komen Breast Cancer Foundation. But cause marketing is really about incentivizing certain kinds of human behavior, and not all of it has to do with buying something. About once a quarter I see a really dynamite non-transactional cause-related marketing campaign and It’s Time to Feel Better from Cigna Corporation, the health and life insurance company, is a terrific example. It’s Time to Feel Better is an educational website with an interactive knowledge game. You reach the game by clicking on ‘Test Your Knowledge Here.’ The game is a series of questions… more than 250 in all… that tests your knowledge of health, health insurance, disease and the like. On the left side of the screen is a water spigot. As you answer the questions correctly, the water...