Cause Marketing

When I posted about Qdoba’s instant-on cause marketing effort to benefit the Colorado wildfire crisis, the estimable cause marketer Steve Drake asked where was the rest of these kind of promotions were to be found, especially in the state of Colorado. In fact, a number of Colorado food and dining establishments have offered cause marketing, flat donations of money and food, in addition to prayers. Here’s a rundown: A Colorado Panera franchisee, Local Breads of the World, made a $20,000 donation to the Care and Share Food Bank In Golden the Boston Market served food to evacuees and volunteers at the infamous Waldo Canyon Fire. The Einstein Brothers Bagel location in Lakewood linked its Facebook page to the American Red Cross website and urged patrons to help and thank firefighters. LaMar’s Donuts and Coffee in Centennial donated 4,000 donuts to firefighters and volunteers working near Ft. Collins. Noodles and Company in Broomfield used its Facebook page to ask fans to offer a prayer ...

Back in the 1980s, at the behest of Jerry Welsh, American Express trademarked the term ‘Cause-Related Marketing.’ Welsh, who was then executive vice president worldwide marketing and communications at Amex, coined the term ‘cause-related marketing’ to describe the legendary campaign to fund the restoration of the Statue of Liberty in 1983. In a Feb. 2009 interview with Welsh, he told me that the wording of this new term was purposeful. “I believe in the deliberate use of language, so I was careful in crafting the term ‘Cause-Related Marketing.’ CRM is not philanthropy; it’s rather marketing through an artful association with a charitable cause. Otherwise, I would have called it something like ‘Marketing-Related Philanthropy.’” Despite Welsh’s fastidiousness with language, one of the wonders of the term cause marketing is that it’s flexible enough to permit efforts for causes that aren’t officially-sanctioned charities. In my hometown of Salt Lake City, there’s a cause marketing campai...