Cause Marketing

Uh-oh! Your A-list celebrity supporter just pulled a Tiger and embarrassed himself and his family on a tape first seen on TMZ and now airing on every screen on the planet. It seems like everywhere they point a camera, someone new is coming forward to say that they, too, did something appalling with your alpha celebrity. (Cue Karl Malden VO) “ What will you do? What will you do? " Fire him? Disavow? Stand by her for as long as you can stand the heat? A new study by Harris Poll suggests that maybe you do nothing. Although there is a veritable cottage industry of celebrity trackers waiting for them to step outside without any makeup, or look less than flattering in their bikini, or utter a drunken calumny, or run over a paparazzi in their Mercedes, maybe none of that matters. An Adweek Media/Harris Interactive Poll published Monday finds that three-quarters of Americans don’t impute any of the blame or think negatively of your brand as a result of your endorsers’ indiscretions. Conc...

Five or six years ago the term 'co-branding' was one of those hot marketing buzzwords. Nowadays co-branding is so commonplace as to be mundane. The point of co-branding is for brands to combine such that they create notable synergy. There are several kinds of co-branding, including cause marketing itself. This article, from Tiger Woods' previous sponsor , Accenture, names six : Promotional/Sponsorship. This is the category cause marketing falls under. Also Motorola's sponsorship of the National Football League. Ingredient. Betty Crocker brownie mix made with Hershey chocolate, or any of the Jack Daniels' dishes at TGI Fridays . Innovation Based. The Apple-Nike tie-up. Value-Chain , which is meant to bring new experiences to the consumer, not just another flavor. There are three varieties of value-chain co-branding: Product Service. Sea World and Southwest Airlines . Supplier-Retailer. Starbucks wifi service from AT&T. Alliance. Think FTD , or those all...

Researchers say that it takes right about 10 years to acquire expertise in anything. And the Tiger Woods video above notwithstanding, it isn’t innate talent that makes you an expert, but those 10 years of study and practice. That explains why Tiger Wood is better golfer than Paul Jones. But what explains why Tiger is better than all his rivals, who have, after all, been playing just as long as he has and sometimes longer? For answers to that question and the role that informal learning plays, visit The Learner’s Guild , my blog on informal learning, for the post called ‘ Let Us Now Praise Famous Informal Learners .’