Cause Marketing

Can you effectively advertise a consumer cause marketing campaign in a B2B publication? That’s the rhetorical question I had when I saw this ad in the September 29, 2010 of Information Week magazine. B2B cause marketing can work. But this isn’t a B2B cause marketing promotion. Instead it’s basically the same consumer-driven transactional cause marketing campaign that Samsung has be doing through its Four Seasons of Hope , which has generated more than $20 million in charitable donations since its founding n 2002. When you buy Samsung electronics at one of the regional retailers listed at the bottom of the ad, Samsung will donate a portion of the sales proceeds to the Dan Marino Foundation , which “provides integrated treatment programs, outreach services and research of chronic illnesses and developmental disabilities in children.” It probably goes without saying that it's highly unusual to see business to consumer cause marketing advertised in a B2B publication. So what’s Sams...

One of the complaints greens have about cause marketing is that it typically incentivizes and rewards the purchase of more stuff. Stuff that might be useful for a while but eventually ends up in a landfill somewhere. Into this conundrum came Sprint , the mobile service provider, and Samsung , the handset maker. Together they came up with a cause marketing campaign that mitigates some of those usual concerns. From August to Dec 2009, Sprint gave $2 to the Nature Conservancy for the sale of each Samsung Reclaim phone and messaging device. There was a guaranteed minimum donation of $250,000. A press release tells me that the maximum donation was $500,000, which the program achieved. The Reclaim phone currently sells for $49.99, with a Sprint plan. The Nature Conservancy is using the donation for its ‘ Adopt an Acre ’ program. To mitigate green concerns, the phone was made from 80 percent recyclable materials and its packaging was fully recyclable. It was the first phone sold in the U.S. w...