Cause Marketing

So how should a corporate sponsor go about sniffing out a cause marketing partner? There are several… oftentimes opposing… schools of thought on the subject. One is that you should pick causes that have some sort of link to your business. For instance, a food business should pick a food charity. Why? So that your customers prospects don’t have to spend too much cognitive energy figuring out what the link is between the two organizations. Because customers just won’t do it. If it doesn’t make sense, they’re not going to pull out their phones to Google the question ‘Why does Acme Axel Manufacturing Company sponsor bone cancer research?’ Instead, it will seem like 'cause-nitive dissonance' and they’ll just ignore it. The opposing view holds that customers see such links as cynical. In this view, a Consumer Packaged Goods that makes canned spaghetti sauce and links up with a network food bank network during the Christmas season is plainly just playing on their customer's em...

Yesterday’s post ‘Five Questions Nonprofit Marketers Need Answers to From Potential Sponsors’ was inspired by a monthly column in Smart Money . Each month the personal finance magazine publishes a feature called “10 Things X Won’t Tell You.” The intent of the feature is to show that your interests and those of your bank, say, don’t always align. In the interest of better alignment between causes and sponsors, here are five questions that a potential sponsor better have a satisfying answer to before engaging in a cause marketing relationship with a charity. Am I Just a Paycheck to You? I had a conversation the other day with a potential cause marketing sponsor scouting for a cause. Their first goal was to generate money for their putative partner. Of course, they also had several business and marketing goals as well. Sophisticated sponsors know that most causes expect money from cause marketing. Fair enough. But if that represents most of a cause’s motivation a sponsor ought to know ...

Smart Money magazine does a monthly feature called “10 Things X Won’t Tell You.” In May 2011 it was ‘10 Things Fund-Raisers Won’t Tell You.’ The point of the feature is that people and organizations have their own self interest that might not always coincide with yours. For instance, in this article number three was “It’s scary what we know about you.” It’s a great premise, but I won’t be as cynical. Instead, here’s five things that causes ought to ask of and about potential sponsors before they ink a deal. Do You Really Care About My Cause Or Is This Just a Business Deal? Causes naturally would prefer a sponsor’s money and heart, but they’re sophisticated enough to know that it might not always play out that way. So it’s better to know where the sponsor stands at the outset. What Do You Do That Could Embarrass Me? If you pollute the headwaters of the Yangtze or employ child labor, or bribe high government officials, as a cause I want to know that beforehand. It may mean that I’l...