Cause Marketing

A New Paper Icon Approach At Staples right now is this inventive paper icon campaign for City of Hope , a research and treatment hospital in Southern California with a specialty in cancer. It goes for the typical $1. When you scratch off the overprint, you get a bounce-back discount coupon for savings from $5 to $50 on subsequent purchases of specific items at Staples. While there have long been coupon icons, they typically are much larger. This approach is simpler and smaller. It’s also more versatile. It would be very easy to add a sweepstakes component. For instance, if City of hope has some kind of annual rallying point…a race, an event, a gala… the sweepstakes could bring some lucky winner(s) to the event. Although to be sure, laws in the United States would require a no-cost form of entry. I don’t know what it costs to print these icons, but on first blush I expect that with 4 colors it’s more than with the standard issue paper icons. City of Hope’s website says the campaign be...

Sprint and Motorola Campaign for Red Many cause-related marketing campaigns require consumers to buy something. Maybe it’s a rubber bracelet. Or a plush toy. Maybe it’s a dessert special or music CD, or some kind of service. While some people will just buy the cause-related marketing product or service without being prompted, usually they won’t. Like life insurance, and a tie that goes with the suit, sometimes cause-related marketing isn’t bought, it’s sold. (Packaged goods being a notable exception.) I was reminded of this the other day when I was in my local Sprint store. Sprint Nextel is third-largest wireless telecommunications provider in the States, with 52 million subscribers. Along with Motorola, they are among the sponsors of the Red campaign. When you sign up for service and purchase a themed MotoRazr or Motoslvr phone, Motorola and Sprint jointly donate $17 to Red’s efforts to eradicate AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria in Africa. I know this because they had a dandy little...