Cause Marketing

In every bad cause marketing campaigns, ads and research I’ve autopsied this year I’ve tried to find something to praise. This is in stark contrast to the postmortems they do on all those CSI-style dramas that air on TV nearly nonstop in the States these days. You’d never hear this dialogue on any of those shows: “How did he die, doc?” “Well, he ate a high fiber diet that kept his blood cholesterol in a very healthy range. And it looks like he had the resting heart rate of Tour de France champion. But I’d say it was the bullet to his heart that killed him.” But in the interest of fairness, I tried to do just that in 2008. Right now, though, in the interest of brevity, I'm just going to be snarky. I couldn’t believe the little ad I saw in Cookie magazine for a fundraiser for startup charity called  Cookies for Kids Cancer . The headline read: “But a Cookie, Save a Life.” As I wrote then, “my reaction was, ‘Oh no they just didn’t!’ The ad was one of seven on a single page; the ...

Buy a Bikini, Help Cure Cancer New York City (small-d) fashion designer Shoshonna Lonstein Gruss may have one of the more absurd cause-related marketing campaigns I’ve come across lately. When you buy the bikini or girls one-piece swimsuit at Bergdorf-Goodman in New York shown at the left all sales “proceeds” benefit Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center . Look past the weak ‘ proceeds ’ language, which I always decry, and think for a moment about the incongruities of the sales of swimsuits benefiting the legendary Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. Cancer has nothing to do swimming or swimsuits or summering in The Hamptons for that matter. And it’s not clear from her website why Shoshanna, the comely lass who once adorned the arm of comedian Jerry Seinfeld, has chosen the esteemed cancer center to bestow her gifts, although a web search shows that she’s supported its events for years. Lesser critics would say that the ridiculousness of it all is a sign that cause-related marketing is ...