Cause Marketing

One of the topics broached at the Cause Marketing Academy a few weeks back in Phoenix is was what a sponsor with operations outside North America should do if its preferred cause stateside doesn’t really have operations abroad, which is true of all but a select few charities. The obvious answer is that you work with causes abroad that follow a like theme; children’s health, or animal welfare. Then we went down the rabbit hole on treasury issues, requisite disclosure in multiple countries, currency exchanges, and all kinds of legal headaches. Then there’s the issues of coordinating the marketing across multiple languages and cultures. Sponsors can be forgiven is they just throw up their hands at the thought of some kind of unified cause marketing effort that takes place at roughly the same time in multiple countries. Or, you could just call one of the causes associated with the UN and be done with it. That’s what two luxury brands, TAG Heuer of Switzerland and Mont Blanc of Ge...

Alden Keene & Associates got its annual renewable energy report the other day from our electric utility, Rocky Mountain Power. In December 2008 we signed up with ‘Blue Sky,’ a wind-energy offsets program, so as to help lessen the environmental impact of Causemarketing.biz. At left is the statement for the last 12 months. The back of the statement is below. Last time around the statement included a bulleted list of the positive effects of the program, customized to Alden Keene. This year Rocky Mountain Power gave the list a little extra graphical punch and with it more relevance in my view. I think there’s a lesson here for cause marketers. Even if such customization isn’t usually possible for most cause marketing campaigns, cause marketers need to report back campaign results. Such reporting builds transparency and as I posted earlier this month… “Transparency is vital to cause marketing. And part of transparency is to report back on how it all went. Such reporting reassures suppo...

“Now I don’t know what you do for your five-percent, but this man my husband has a whole plan, an image... we majored in marketing, Jerry, and when you put him in a Waterbed Warehouse commercial, excuse me, you are making him common. He is pure gold and you’re giving him “Waterbed Warehouse” when he deserves the big four -- shoe, car, clothing-line, soft-drink. The four jewels of the celebrity endorsement dollar.” The wonderfully watchable actress Regina King spoke those lines as Marcee Tidwell in the 1996 Tom Cruise, Renee Zellweger, Cuba Gooding Jr. movie Jerry Maguire . The script was written by Cameron Crowe , but the sentiment probably came straight from legendary Southern California sports agent Leigh Steinberg . It’s said that Crowe, who also directed the movie, shadowed Steinberg for months while writing the script. Nowadays, there are two new jewels in the celebrity endorsement crown; an eponymous foundation and a luxury watch deal. Check here for a list of the charities ce...