Cause Marketing

This week is 'National Breakfast Week,' sponsored in part, as we shall see, by Kellogg’s. Why should we care? Because “1 in 5 children live in homes where breakfast is hard to come by.” What should we do? “Share Your Breakfast” on Kellogg’s corporate site or their Facebook page by saying what you had for breakfast this morning. I had a yogurt and oatmeal, so I entered that into the appropriate box. I was then invited to share that via Facebook or an email that included the following message: Help kids in need get off to their best starts. Share what you had for breakfast and Kellogg's will help provide a breakfast for a child in need. What happens? Kellogg’s donates one school breakfast, up to one million meals, each time you 'Share Your Breakfast.' Basically, Kellogg’s writes a check for up to $200,000. Kellogg’s cause partner is Action for Healthy Kids , a consortium of 70 or so organizations like the Whole Grains Council, the American Academy of Pediatrics an...

I saw a recent post on Just Means critical of Kellogg’s new cause marketing campaign called ‘ Share Your Breakfast ’ and I wondered, should sinners or the impious be permitted to pray? Should teachers wait until their students know the alphabet before allowing them to speak? Should I, as a man, wait until I’m emotionally available to my wife before I listen to something she’s telling me? Is Nobelist Al Gore the only person who can legitimately donate to Greenpeace or the Sierra Club ? Or, while we're on the topic of charitable donations, could any company ever be morally upright enough to make donations to a good cause via cause marketing? The post in question was written by staff writer Akhila Vijayaraghavan, whose beat at Just Means is corporate social responsibility. She writes: “Some of the products that Kellogg has been promoting as part of its campaign includes Frosted Flakes and Nutri-Grain bars. However both products have been criticized for the high levels of sugar tha...