Cause Marketing

Done right, cause marketing can be a terrific branding tool for the cause and the sponsor. But doing it right is the challenge. It’s easy to slap together a transactional cause marketing campaign for some consumable item; a box of Kleenix, a candy bar, a toothbrush. But when a consumer purchases an everyday item, that purchase probably doesn’t connect the cause, the sponsor, and the consumer at a very deep level. No one uses a Zip-Loc bag, which benefits schools through the Boxtops for Education campaign, and thinks about local school kids having better educational outcomes as a result.   As a marketer I don’t have any problem with that kind of imbedded giving that exists at a surface level. But if the sponsor or the cause wants to really build their brand, they’re going to need to add a little extra something. That’s what Sharpie has done in its effort on behalf of the City of Hope’s breast cancer research efforts. During October when you buy pink Sharpie products a donatio...

In my wallet are cards and keyfobs for a half-dozen loyalty programs from the sophisticated, like SkyMiles and Marriott Rewards and a couple grocery chains to several no-tech buy 10 get one free punch cards from a bakery and a couple of restaurants. Your wallet or handbag probably holds a similar variety of rewards cards. But is there a potential match between loyalty programs and cause marketing? Marketing superstar Coke, which runs the gigantic MyCokeRewards.com rewards program, has placed its bet. Now to be clear, label redemption efforts from Campbell’s, the Boxtops for Education campaign from General Mills and others are both loyalty and cause marketing programs. But MyCokeRewards was founded as an effort to reward Coke purchasers, not their favored causes. At the left is an ad that ran in the 15 August, 2011 issue of People magazine. Register your school at mycokerewards.com/sprite and it could receive a $25,000 grant to become a ‘Sprite Spark Park.’ Formatted as a ...

Snickers, the candy bar brand from Mars Inc., is a prominent and generous supporter of the anti-hunger charity Feeding America. So why are they doing something that looks suspiciously like faux cause marketing? The ad in question is from Sports Illustrated magazine and depicts a bee, a roaring grizzly bear, insult comedian Don Rickles, and actor Joe Pesci, who specializes in playing out-of-control-angry mob characters. The ad depicts a kind of gas gauge with an arrow and the headline “How Angry Does Hunger Make You?” That headline seems custom-made for a cause marketing campaign. Are you hungry enough to really do something about the crisis of the hungry in United States?, is where this ad could be heading. If so, kill two birds with one stone by grabbing a Snickers. When you do, we’ll make a donation to our long-time partner Feeding America. But this isn't an ad or an effort in support of Feeding America. Certainly past Snickers efforts for Feeding America have featured much more...

Back in August I bought this cause-marketed Snickers bar during my fourth trip of the day to Home Depot. (Is it even possible to do home repairs and take care of all your needs with just one trip to Home Depot / Lowes ?) Here’s how it works: Snickers is donating the cost of 2.5 million meals to Feeding America, the nation’s leading hunger-relief charity. On the inside of the wrapper is a code. Text that code to 45495… or enter it at snickers.com… and Snickers will donate the cost of one meal to Feeding America, up to one million additional meals. The Feeding America website says that each dollar you donate provides seven meals. So Snickers donation might be something like $500,000. But I like that Snickers quantified its donations in terms of meals made available, rather than dollars. That’s much more concrete. It doesn’t hurt that 3.5 million is a much bigger number than $500,000. I also like the way they structured the donation. By guaranteeing 2.5 million meals, the risk of a poor...

On Monday The New York Times profiled a new cause marketing effort from a maker of healthy snacks and do-gooder Daniel Lubetzky, who owns Kind Healthy Snacks. Lubetzky has a small problem. Some of his competitors, including Snickers Bars from confection giant Mars Incorporated, are also using cause marketing to sell their own snack lines. The Times reporter, Stuart Elliott, never puts it this directly but the logical question is inescapable. If you're a consumer-facing company with a commitment to cause marketing is it a good thing if your competitors are utilizing cause marketing, too? All of us who have been involved in cause marketing for more than a decade or so remember that one of our primary sales points to prospects was that cause marketing helps you distinguish your product or service from competitors and gives you a new story to tell customers and the press. Increasingly that advantage is disappearing. (The result is a lament like the Gotterdammerung some Americans fe...