Cause Marketing

A local grocery store is selling paper shamrocks for MDA starting at $1. The local Cinemark theater is selling lapel pins for $3 that support the Variety Club. Both MDA and the Variety Club are august charities that in the main serve children. Both approaches have advantages to recommend them and shortcomings to overcome. Here’s a short list of the pluses and minuses of each: A box of 100 of either the lapel pin or the shamrock is probably about the same size, meaning they take an equivalent amount of counter space. Sales of both the paper shamrock and the pins will eventually go stale. But whereas most retailers wouldn’t have many qualms about throwing the leftover paper icons in the recycle bin, it wouldn't be so easy to do the same for the Variety lapel pin because they have a higher perceived value. Paper icons, if they’re displayed in the store or theater, can have such impact that they drive more sales. But they can also make a visual mess of your establishment. Both a...

Buy a virtual glass of lemonade from Lemonadestandforlife.com , sponsored by Volvo, and the money goes to Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation to support families who must travel for their child’s cancer treatments. Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation, is named for Alex Scott, who in the year 2000 at the age of 4 announced to her parents that pediatric cancer must be cured and to do her part she was going to sell lemonade from a stand. Alex herself suffered from neuroblastoma and died in 2004 at the tender age of 8. By then she had already raised $1 million for cancer research. Now a 501(c)(3) charity, Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation, has generated $35 million for cancer research, $12 million of it from lemonade stands. Volvo’s relationship with ALSF began in 2002 when Alex was nominated for the inaugural Volvo for Life Awards. She won it in 2003. And in 2004 Volvo dealers helped Alex meet her goal to raise $1 million for pediatric cancer research before the year end. Sadly, Alex died in Aug...

List-Schmist? Sandra Sims had a comment on the recent post about the Muscular Dystrophy Association’s “e-Shamrock” campaign . Her points were so interesting that rather than respond to her via Blogspot's clumsy comments system, I thought I'd post directly to the blog. Sandra's comments are here in italics, followed by my response. “This is an interesting update to the paper icon campaigns. When Chili's did their campaign for St. Judes at their restaurants last year they had an online site where you could create a pepper and print it out, though they didn't charge for it. So that ability, with a donation, would be another good suggestion. MDA could have also added to Honor/Memory of component by sending an email to the person it was made in Honor/Memory of. I think your points about it going viral and the fact that MDA builds a list are two of the campaign's strongest points. Though the question is how strong is that list? If the people are donating low amounts ...

We turn again to the icon campaign only this time an all-electronic version. It’s the season of St. Patrick’s Day in the United States and the Muscular Dystrophy Association is selling their paper Shamrocks in stores and other retail locations. I saw them advertised as a top banner ad on the website of my local newspaper. I clicked on the ad and it took me to a secure page on the MDA website . It took forever to download, but in time a video appeared featuring a short performance from by singer Ace Young from their telethon. Young, a former American Idol finalist, then made a call to action to support the MDA by buying an electronic version of their Shamrock in $5 or $10 amounts, or more. Some of the traffic comes from Young’s Myspace page and he addresses those fans directly in the script. MDA also has a Myspace page and counts Young as a friend. Like all icon campaigns this is “ fortune at the bottom of the pyramid ” type fundraising, but for MDA an 'e-Shamrock' is vastl...