Cause Marketing

Nine local stations in my market are conducting a two-day radiothon benefiting the State’s largest homeless shelter... called the Road Home... yesterday and today. Their fundraising goal is $250,000 . This pales in comparison to the big dogs of radiothons, Children’s Miracle Network and St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital , which generate tens of millions of dollars. But it’s an admirable effort nonetheless, none the least of which because it involves stations from two separate ownership groups and multiple radio formats! After getting killed in the early days of the Great Recession the Radio Advertising Bureau reports that radio has grown in 2010 , although more so at the national than local level. Still, how do you do ask a local radio station to do a radiothon at a time when stations can't afford to turn down even one ad? Here’s how: most stations do change the way they format their programming during the radiothon, but the time spent talking about the cause comes out of the ...

One way to improve the likelihood of response to your cause marketing is to create an aspect of rivalry. If you’re doing an icon campaign for instance, you could and probably should draw on existing rivalries to see who can sell the most. So you might pit division against division, managers against managers, and even individuals against each other for bragging rights and prizes. As I written before, icon campaigns can be thought of as sales contests . A company based here in my home state, ZAGG, is using rivalries among its consumer base in a cause marketing campaign. ZAGG sells a clear thin film that covers iPads, iPhones, smartphones and the like, as well as other accessories for electronic devices. Called the ZAGGSkins Fan Challenge, ZAGG will donate 20 percent of all proceeds to the National Kidney Foundation of Utah & Idaho when you buy either a University of Utah or Brigham Young University branded ZAGG covering. The Utah-BYU rivalry... sometimes called the 'Holy War...