Cause Marketing

King’s Hawaiian, which makes those fat loaves of pillowy-sweet bread is doing one of those democratized cause marketing efforts that I love to hate. Only I don’t exactly hate this one from my Hawaiian ‘ohana’ as much. You know what I mean when I say democratized cause marketing; the cause that gets the most votes takes home the biggest check. A second characteristic is that much of activation occurs via the standard social networks. American Express did it with its Members Project. Pepsi infamously did it with Pepsi Refresh. Redwood Creek, a wine brand, does one as well . And there are more. What I hate about these efforts is that they pit charities against each other in ways that I find unseemly. All of us want to see charities cooperating for the greater good, not elbowing out their perceived competitors at the trough.These kinds of promotions can bring out the worst in causes. Also, there’s a frequently a strong Matthew Effect at work in these efforts; the rich get richer and ...

Today is the last day of Breast Cancer Awareness Month 2012 and I devote this final pink ribbon post to Project Pink , from Puma, the shoe and apparel company. Project Pink is a contest of the sort made popular American Express’s Member’s Project and Pepsi Refresh. That is, causes nominate themselves to receive a large cash prize then rally their supporters to vote them through the rounds, usually via social media. Beginning on July 6, 2012, Puma accepted nominations for a single prize worth as much as $120,000. The donation was based on the profits from the sale of Project Pink merchandise, mainly branded shorts and t-shirts, and by the number of tweets with a promotional hashtag. Promotion extensions included a celebrity soccer match with actor/singer Ashley Tisdale. Project Pink had a verification phase in September and the voting began on Sept 24 and ended on October 5, 2012. Puma announced the winner earlier this month; the Dr. Susan Love Research Foundation . I never really lik...

I’m always a little bit chary of the many contests that offer a donation to charities that get the most votes, or Likes, or pageviews, or Tweets. Pepsi Refresh and American Express Members Project are prominent, but hardly the only examples of these kinds of Crowd-Sourced Cause Marketing promotions. Maxwell House, a coffee brand from Kraft, does its own version of this Crowd-Sourced Cause Marketing called Drops of Good in partnership with the cause Rebuilding Together. My problem is that such promotions so often become beg-a-thons, and pathetic ones at that. Since promotional money is always tight, only a relatively small handful of humble supplicants ever get funded. After 2.1 million votes, Maxwell House’s top grant was $10,000, which it gave to five communities. Another five got $5,000. And because of the winners-take-all approach of most of these promotions, a charity that gets even a few hundred less votes than the finalists is basically out of luck with nary a consolation priz...

Henkel, the large German consumer products and adhesives company has come in for some criticism in these pages for stingy cause marketing payouts and even bad copyediting. I’ve got more criticism this time out, only of the constructive variety. Through the end of September 2011 Henkel is running a contest to find the best ideas to improve school fitness in America and get a shot at three $10,000 prizes awarded to one elementary, one middle, and one high school. Here’s how it works: Enter your school at Henkelhelps.com. Then work your social network to get the most votes from the public. The cause is called Alliance for a Healthier Generation , founded by the American Heart Association and the William J. Clinton Foundation. The mission of the Alliance for a Healthier Generation is to “Help cultivate a healthier generation of children today so that we will have a healthier America tomorrow.” The Alliance keeps a database of fitness approaches on its website. Large cash prizes...

American Express has its Member’s Project and Pepsi has Pepsi Refresh , both of which award millions of dollars in prizes and cost perhaps two to three times as much to activate, promote and administer. But can smaller sponsors do this voter-driven democratized cause marketing in a way that is both in reach and effective? One sponsor that’s trying is Redwood Creek , a wine brand owned by Frei Bros Vineyards of Modesto, California, with its promotion called the Great Outdoors Project . The Great Outdoors Project awards a top prize of $50,000 to a nonprofit organization “to use towards specific environmental projects that aim to preserve, protect and provide access to the great American outdoors.” $90,000 more is split between nine other finalists. So figure that Redwood Creek is into this $140,000 in prizes and perhaps another $420,000, give or take to activate and administer the promotion. That’s perhaps $560,000 total. Not inexpensive, but certainly within reach for companies that do...

It's rare to see national television ads for cause marketing. But since January I count three: Disney Parks' efforts to encourage volunteerism, utilizing the Muppets. Outback Steakhouse's campaign for Operation Homefront. American Express's ad with Yvon Chouinard on behalf of their Member's Project campaign. Of the three, I appreciate Disney's ads (there are several versions) the most because they feature an emotion aside from earnestness. But I'd love to get your feedback. So I've set up a poll in the column to the immediate right. Please follow the links to view the ads and vote for the one you prefer. The poll closes in a month.

Exporting Caring and Dollars American Express’ Member’s Project , which will fund one member project to the tune of as much as $5 million based on the vote of American Express card holders, is now down to five finalists: National Parks Foundation, for the repair and refurbishment of the 391 National Parks. American Solar Energy Society to create a small solar-powered generating unit suitable for residential homes. US Fund for UNICEF Children’s Safe Drinking Water initiative to deliver clean, pure water to children worldwide. DonorsChoose.org, a web-enabled way to match school needs with outsiders willing to help. American Forests initiative called Plant a Million Trees, a global reforestation campaign to plant trees in the United States and around the globe. For those of you keeping score at home, two out of five of those projects have truly global reach. And as of this writing, the UNICEF safe water campaign holds a commanding lead in advance of the August 7 deadline. UNICEF’s lead ma...

For years Europeans and the Romans before them presumed that there was no such a thing as a black swan because all the known swans in the Old World and the New were white. As a result, the aphorism “all swans are white” signified something that was obviously true. Finally European explorers sighted a black swan in Australia in 1697 and a pair were captured in 1726. Turns out black swans are quite common in Australia and New Zealand. About that David Hume…the Scottish logician-philosopher who lived 1711 to 1776 …wrote: “No amount of observations of white swans can allow the inference that all swans are white, but the observation of a single black swan is sufficient to refute that conclusion.” In the hands of logicians like Hume and mathematicians-investors like Nassim Taleb , the author of the recent book on randomness called “The Black Swan,” the possibility of ‘black swans’ is a problem of logical and probability and for Taleb especially, a monumental challenge in generating reliable...