Cause Marketing

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...

There’s many ways to activate cause marketing, but the most common way… and usually the least expensive… is with public relations. And one story that you must master when 'efforting' women’s magazines is a pretty standard transactional cause marketing pitch; buy our thing and a portion of the proceeds benefits this fine cause. Get the details right and it’ll probably get you coverage. But it’s the classic case of good news/bad news. The good news is you’ve got a pretty good chance at getting coverage in women’s magazines like Ladies Home Journal , O, the Oprah Magazine , Allure , Elle , Vogue , Lucky , Shape , Town and Country , and Self . The Alden Keene Cause Marketing Database has cause marketing stories from all of these women’s magazines and more. The bad news, you’ll almost certainly have to share the coverage with other cause marketing efforts which may be thematically similar to yours, as in the story at the left from the August 2011 Redbook . Magazine editors love, lov...

Self Magazine publishes periodic pieces on cause marketing as a part of its GOOD initiative. The tent pole of GOOD is a consumer research study of 2,700 women that highlights the emotional impact that cause marketing can have, especially as compared to traditional marketing. Here, then, are links to three articles from the GOOD newsletter archive that I find especially notable: http://www.selfconnected.com/goodworks/0803/ http://www.selfconnected.com/goodworks/0806/ http://www.selfconnected.com/goodworks/newsletter/0711/