Cause Marketing

The day was March 9, 1967 and NBC had a challenging ratings failure on its hands called ‘Star Trek.’ The conundrum for network executives was that bad ratings notwithstanding, the people who loved the polarizing series loved it with the fire of a 1000 Vulcan suns. And so after threatening to cancel the series after the first season, NBC executives felt obliged at the end of the show that March 9, to make an odd live announcement. “‘Star Trek’ will be back in the fall,” it went. “And please don’t write any more letters.” Fans had in engaged in an adhoc letter writing campaign that buoyed the series through that first season and through three more. In total, just 79 Star Trek episodes had aired. But to the degree that Star Trek has become a science fiction franchise it’s because in 1974 a group of 10,000 like-minded geeks gathered in at the Americana Hotel in New York City to dress up like their favorite Trek characters, screen individual shows and extol all things Trek. People with sing...

Last Thursday, January 10, I heaped praise on the TOMS Shoes use of strategic cause-related marketing to improve the world, launch their business, and generate terrific word of mouth . Their appeal is specific, easy to understand, and streamlined. For every pair of TOMS Shoes you buy, another pair is donated to a child who needs them. I also greatly admired their “shoe drops,” whereby they invite customers to join them in places like South Africa and Argentina… at their own expense… to give away TOMS shoes to kids. TOMS, I wrote, was well on its way to creating a “cult brand,” like Harley-Davidson, Jimmy Buffet, or the Star Trek franchise. I did suggest there was more that TOMS could do to their website to make it more word of mouth friendly and left it at that. One person anonymously commented on the post, saying, in effect; “alrighty, smart guy, what would you do to optimize a website for word of mouth?” Glad you asked. I would do at least the following: TOMS should add to their men...