Cause Marketing

One of my ongoing complaints with a lot of cause marketing activation is the degree to which sponsors seem to want to keep their distance from their partner cause (or visa versa). There’s none of that in this ad for Pur, which really 'owns' its longstanding commitment to clean water in Africa. Pur, which is a water purifier brand from Procter & Gamble, offers a straightforward transactional cause marketing effort. Buy various Pur products online and the company will send water purification packets to needy African countries. Since 2008, Pur packets have treated more than 1.6 billion liters of water. P&G developed the packets itself, which contain a powder that purifies and disinfects a liter of bad water. What I like about this ad that I found in the Alden Keene Cause Marketing Database is the degree to which Pur really entwines its brand with the cause. While the main art is about the family benefits of Pur’s in-home water filtration offerings, half the body copy is...

In commenting on Tuesday’s posting about the “Five Flavors of Cause-Related Marketing," Carolyn asks: “Can you give an example of a ‘replacement’ campaign? As an outsider, it can be hard to definitively identify a replacement program. But there are some earmarks. The most telling may be the language in the ad. When you read something like; “When you buy [our product] you help us make a donation of $250,000 to [cause].” Or, as in the case of this ad from a free-standing insert (FSI) from Proctor & Gamble’s April brandSAVER, which reads: “Now P&G has set a goal of donating 50 million more liters through brandSAVER. For every coupon you redeem from the April issue of brandSAVER, P&G will supply a liter of filtered water to someone in the developing world who desperately needs it. And you can help just by redeeming coupons for the products you already bring home to your family.” Let me be clear, without talking to the P&G folks I don’t know if this is replacement camp...

There I was, glancing through my March issue of Teen Vogue (don’t ask) when I came across the arresting image on the left. Like any fashion magazine, Teen Vogue is mostly ads of girls in fashionable attire in chichi locales. So this ad for a cause-related marketing campaign from Proctor & Gamble’s Tampax brand really pops. The campaign is another branch of Proctor & Gamble’s growing relationship with African causes and the United Nations. P&G’s water purifier brand Pur supports water purification efforts in Kenya. And P&G has been doing a packaged goods cause-related marketing campaign for UNICEF for at least a half-dozen years. The campaign is multi-faceted and, frankly, more than just a little confusing. You don’t need to go to the beinggirl.com/hero website to get that. Just look at the ‘logo soup’ at the bottom of the ad. Here’s the bones of the campaign: P&G is donating $1.4 million to HERO , a campaign of the United Nations Association (UNA-USA). The money ...