Cause Marketing

Just last night my youngest asked me what my favorite thing to do was when I was her age. I grew up on the edge of the Sonoran Desert and outside our home near a crossroads was a large mound of brush several hundred feet across that was home to all manner of desert animals, reptiles and insects. Many is the hour I spent watching creatures crawl in to and out of that mound. To this day I remember vividly a grisly encounter between a rattlesnake and a roadrunner, where, as in the Warner Brothers’ cartoon, the roadrunner emerged unscathed. In short, I didn't suffer from what author Richard Louv has called ‘Nature Deficit Disorder.’ But in his 2005 book ‘Last Child in the Woods,’ Louv describes the possible effects: Limited respect for natural surroundings Attention deficit disorders, depressions, mood disorders, and poor grades. Childhood obesity. So far, no medical manual recognizes Nature Deficit Disorder, but the outdoor products company The North Face does and is ...

One criticism of cause marketing I often hear is that money raised that way is almost certain to be a pittance for most charities. But such criticisms overlook a crucial point about cause marketing funds. Nationally syndicated author Cecil Adams, for instance, when addressing his “answer-man” column to the issue of pink ribbon cause marketing wondered why conscientious Yoplait eaters wouldn’t just send a $12 check to Susan G. Komen for the Cure rather than futz around with yogurt carton lids. More to the point, if your charity is not Komen or Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals, or St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital… each of which annually raise more than $75 million via cause marketing…what’s in it for your charity? There’s two main answers; the second is that your sponsor-partner has a strong incentive to promote your cause as they promote their sponsorship. Charities shouldn’t settle for just brand-building or awareness-raising when they sign cause marketing deals, but it’s not ...

The Consumer Wars have been fought, and frankly, Consumers won. In the process, retailers ceded their pricing power and maybe their sustainability. Can cause marketing come to the rescue? That question came after reading the unsigned editorial at the left in a recent issue of Outdoor USA Magazine , a trade publication of the outdoor retailers and manufacturers industry. The editorial is specifically about the dangers to outdoor retailers of using Groupon . But at a broader level for retailers it's really about preserving brand, margins, maybe even the business itself in this post-Consumer world. Groupon really isn’t the problem so much as it is the symptom. After-all retailers have had deep-discount sales promotions in their arsenal for generations. Instead, Groupon is another sign that retailers don’t have many weapons left in that arsenal to preserve pricing power. Opines the magazine’s editors; “At the end of the day, marketing channels like Groupon and Facebook Deals are really...