Cause Marketing

Last Sunday August 7, 2011 Boxtops for Education ran a tightly coordinated back to school promotion in my market, and probably yours as well. It featured dozens of ads in my local newspaper promoting many of its supporting brands. This post includes a representative number of scans of the ads I spotted in the paper, all of which are now found the Alden Keene Cause Marketing Database. Boxtops for Education was founded by General Mills, but has been adopted by other non-competing brands. The biggest presence overall was General Mills’ themed FSI (Free Standing Insert), which, in my market, had 12-pages of coupons. Mainly it was General Mills strongest brands, Yoplait, Big G Cereals, Progresso, Nature Valley, Betty Crocker, Pillsbury, etc. There was at least some Boxtops for Education branding on 11 of the 12 pages in the FSI. The FSI cover is on the left. Yoplait, so closely associated with Susan G Komen for the Cure was one of the brands in the FSI, and indeed some cartons of ...

On this blog my job is to highlight and dissect the best and worst cause marketing campaigns and creative. Today the campaign in question edges closer to the latter than the former. This campaign by Dial/Henkel… whose tagline is “A Brand Like a Friend”… is cute enough, but what the FSI needs is a friendly copy editor. In July, soap-maker The Dial Corporation ran this FSI, which features Dial’s corporate parent Henkel, a German conglomerate. The campaign asked people to submit a 200-word essay to Dial/Henkel to help with a neighborhood cleanup. The winner was Lorrie G. of Gainesville, Texas who wrote: "In June Gainesville, TX made national news. Our community was devastated with a horrific flood. We are still cleaning it up. We had 2 children and one adult die because of the flood. We have a small zoo. There were no animals killed, but it did flood the landscape, especially the children’s educational center. Most was lost. Most of the city’s parks were right by the creeks that floo...