Cause Marketing

There’s some swell cause marketing messaging on many packaged goods products these days, but after the messaging gets in the home, then what? This thought was promoted by a recent study from MeadWestvaco, which found that after people get a product home, they are less satisfied with the packaging than when they pulled it off the grocer’s shelf. Think about it, products like a can of soup probably get eaten in one fell swoop, while a box of cereal may last for weeks, and a tin of nutmeg might stay in the home for years. In other words a cause marketing message could be in the pantry for days, months, or years. Why wouldn’t the cause and the sponsor want to continue to interact with a consumer whose loyalty is proven? Naturally you should put the pertinent URLs on the packaging. That’s an obvious first step. Loyalty programs like My Coke Rewards, which has a cause marketing component, are another answer, and a good one.  Several prominent cause marketing efforts require you to sen...

Throughout October 2012, in honor of Breast Cancer Awareness Month, I’ll post on a new breast cancer cause marketing campaign each business day. First up is Clinique’s Great Skin, Great Cause moisturizing lotion now available wherever Clinique is sold, as well as online . The lotion is $36 and comes with a pink ribbon key ring and a breast cancer awareness pink ribbon charm. Of the $36, $10 goes to the cause, a generous donation amount from a dedicated sponsor. Clinique is owned by the Estee Lauder Companies, so the benefiting charity is the Breast Cancer Research Foundation, which was founded by Evelyn Lauder in 1993. Evelyn Lauder was the daughter-in-law of Estee and for many years the public face of the company until her death in 2011.  Evelyn Lauder, along with Alexandra Penney, then editor of Self magazine, also co-founded and popularized the pink ribbon as a symbol of the fight against breast cancer in 1992. In the 20 years since, the one place where you are almost guaran...

Right now at Mimi’s restaurants, when you buy a ‘Miracle Balloon’ pin for $5 benefiting Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals, you get a paper icon to be displayed in the restaurant and three bounceback coupons worth as much as $30. I once wrote that Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals had forgotten more about cause marketing than almost any other charity knew about the practice. I meant that as a back-handed compliment. From my vantage-point it seemed to me that many of the things that CMNH had once known in its bones about what did and didn’t work in cause marketing seemed to be lost to CMNH’s institutional memory. But this promotion tells me that Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals has regained its footing. This is a very solid paper icon campaign.   Mimi’s Café is a casual dining restaurant chain with more than 100 stores in 22 states, with a heavy concentration of the total units in California. Mimi’s Café is a division of Bob Evans Farms. What’s to like about the camp...

A new study out suggests that people with smart phones and tablets would scan more QR codes, if only they knew that their mobile device could do it. QR codes help companies and cause span the physical and online. I recommend to many of my cause clients that they use a QR code to help add urgency and emotion to their appeals. The study released in February 2012, by JiWire found that 18 percent of those surveyed in the fourth quarter of 2011 had scanned a QR code in the prior 90 days. The more interesting number is that 53 percent of those who knew that their smart phone could scan QR codes had done so in the previous 90 days. Basically all smart phones and tablets with a camera can scan QR codes if they have the right app, which is usually free and oftentimes already on the mobile device. What this tells me is that any QR code needs two messages surrounding it. The first is that smart phones can read it and the second message explains why someone would want to point their mobile device...

I’ve been pounding the table for cause marketers to use QR codes now for about a year now, but too often, a new report finds, we’re using them to direct traffic to our website or Facebook page. Instead, customers expect the codes to take them to content that’s pertinent to the print piece they just scanned. Taking them to the front page of a website is a missed opportunity, says a report from Direct Marketing IQ . Customers “don’t have time to waste,” the reports says. “They want to be served content, offers, surveys, etc. that matter to them.” Certainly customers have proven their willingness to point their smart phones at the codes; scan rates in first quarter 2011 were 4500 percent higher than 1Q 2010. Where should the QR codes take people instead? Augmented reality images on smart phones. Promotions and co-promotions. Contests and sweepstakes. Links to video presentations. Downloadable giveaways to certain donors. Targeted Facebook/Twitter interfaces. Special content on microsites...

If you add a QR-code to a paper icon campaign, just how many code scans can you expect? Chili’s, the restaurant chain, added a QR code to its Create-A-Pepper paper icon which engendered 291,000 scans in September 2011. As of this writing, the Create-A-Pepper campaign generated $3,013,735 in donations to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital so far in 2011. It’s tempting to conclude that almost 10 percent of people who bought a Create-A-Pepper paper icon also scanned the QR code, but it’s not quite that simple. Not all the money from Create-A-Pepper campaign comes from the paper icons and Create-A-Pepper lasts longer than just September, which is National Childhood Cancer Awareness Month. Moreover, Chili’s had a different QR code on other campaign marketing materials in restaurants which led people to a thank you from a St. Jude patient. “As the latest trend in mobile technology, QR codes gave Chili’s a unique way to say thank you while encouraging guests to donate to the Create-A-Pepp...

For three generations… since 1950… the United States Fund for UNICEF has sponsored Trick or Treat for UNICEF a door-to-door fundraiser conducted by children and meant to take place on or around Halloween, October 31. In 60 years Trick or Treat for UNICEF has raised $164 million, an average of $2.7 million a year. Not bad! But the problem, if you can call it that, is that the campaign has traditionally generated the donations in cash, with all the attendant challenges that entails. Moreover, the people who donated last year are likely to be unknown to the United States Fund for UNICEF and almost certainly forgotten by the kids, meaning there’s little continuity from year to year. Surely there’s a role here for technology. And indeed the United States Fund for UNICEF has embraced a slick new way for kids to Trick or Treat for UNICEF. Today kids can Trick or Treat for UNICEF, raise good sum of money and never touch a single nickel of it. This Halloween the kids can print out a canister wr...

Since the start of the year I’ve been beating the drum pretty hard for sponsors and causes to utilize QR codes in their cause marketing campaigns. Read previous posts on the topic here , here , here and here . QR codes are like barcodes, only because they’re in 2D they can hold much more data. You can use QR codes to launch a website or Facebook, display augmented reality, launch a picture or a video, plus many other tactical variations. Here’s tactical implementation that I just proposed to a prospective client that has a physical storefront: put a QR code on a vinyl cling on the clients windows and doors that would launch a sweepstakes entry form. Since basically every smartphone with a camera can read QR codes… and their expense is relatively low…adding them to all your cause marketing collateral makes a lot of sense. The QR code at the left is for me and my company, Alden Keene & Associates, Inc. Point your smartphone at it and it will launch a profile page on a new website ca...