Cause Marketing

Last week I confessed my man-crush on Kohl’s and their remarkable cause marketing efforts using stuffed animals, books, CDs and toys: Since the year 2000, Kohl’s has generated $180 million for kids’ causes. But Kohl’s has more than 1100 stores in 49 states. Could Kohl’s approach scale down to a business with just 1-2 storefronts? My answer is an equivocation. Kohl’s has done deals with whoever owns the rights to Dr. Suess, among many other name-brand children’s book authors. A small operator like Dante’s Pizza, a real three-store chain in Dothan, Alabama that I Googled, wouldn’t be able to pull off that kind of deal. But the good news is that they probably wouldn’t have to do it exactly the way Kohl’s does. At the left is a flyer from big-box retailer IKEA, which has around 50 stores in the United States. Buy one of their toys during the promotional period and IKEA’s foundation will donate $1 to education programs from Save the Children and UNICEF. IKEA’s U.S. website says that in 201...

For three generations… since 1950… the United States Fund for UNICEF has sponsored Trick or Treat for UNICEF a door-to-door fundraiser conducted by children and meant to take place on or around Halloween, October 31. In 60 years Trick or Treat for UNICEF has raised $164 million, an average of $2.7 million a year. Not bad! But the problem, if you can call it that, is that the campaign has traditionally generated the donations in cash, with all the attendant challenges that entails. Moreover, the people who donated last year are likely to be unknown to the United States Fund for UNICEF and almost certainly forgotten by the kids, meaning there’s little continuity from year to year. Surely there’s a role here for technology. And indeed the United States Fund for UNICEF has embraced a slick new way for kids to Trick or Treat for UNICEF. Today kids can Trick or Treat for UNICEF, raise good sum of money and never touch a single nickel of it. This Halloween the kids can print out a canister wr...

I’m working a speech I’ll give next week on cause marketing and the meeting planners asked if I could share some actual ROI data. Such data isn’t impossible to discover. But it’s not at all common. You don’t have too think to hard about it to know why this is so. If a transactional cause marketing was based on sales, then it would be a matter of simple arithmetic for a competitor to figure out unit sales during the time period of the cause marketing promotion, something most companies would be reluctant to reveal. For different reasons we don’t always know what charities net out of their cause marketing efforts, even though their 990 tax return tell us how much money individual U.S. charities take in overall. But in just the last week, I’ve seen two prominent cause marketers who have parted the kimono… but only a little… on actual results. In a news item published October 14, 2011 the executive director of the Susan G. Komen for the Cure chapter in central Oklahoma, Lorna Palmer… revea...

On 14 June, 2007 I posted on the problems I had with Mandarin Oriental’s cause marketing campaign featuring various celebrities and their cause of choice. Now, 4 years later, if anything the campaign is worse because it still does the same thing; a celebrity’s charity of choice gets a mention and a $10,000 donation, and nothing more. Here’s what I wrote back then: There are two kinds of celebrities in the world; those that are in the Mandarin Oriental ad campaign running right now and those whose agents are trying to get them in. It’s an image ad campaign for the 17 (now 23) hotels that are part of the Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group. In it celebrities including I.M. Pei, Zubin Mehta, Helen Mirren, Elle McPherson, and Dame Edna-Barry Humphries are photographed in settings of their choice and they name their favorite Mandarin property. Dame Edna-Barry Humphries got to name two! (Now there’s a new set of celebrity ‘fans,’ with a few holdovers including Mirren, Neeson [see below] and...

In March Sporting Kansas City, a Major League Soccer (MLS) team announced that its new $200 million stadium, scheduled to open in June, would be named Livestrong Sporting Park, in honor of the Lance Armstrong Foundation. Moreover, it appears that Livestrong did not pay for the naming rights and is instead guaranteed a donation of no less that $7.5 million over the next six years. The money will come from a portion of ticket and concession sales to both MLS matches and other events held in the stadium, including concerts. This is the first time a nonprofit has received naming rights for a stadium in the United States. Normally, stadium naming rights go for millions of dollars, even for MLS stadiums. The MLS team in my modestly-sized market, Real Salt Lake, gets a reported $1.5 million to $2 million a year for naming rights from Rio Tinto, the global mining conglomerate headquarterd in London, but with a substantial presence in the Salt Lake Valley. Soccer is no stranger to causes. My f...

The Luxury Collection Hotels and Resorts, a unit of Starwood Hotels and Resorts, is offering travelers the classic deal you can’t refuse benefiting UNICEF . When you book and complete a 2, 3 or 4-day stay before March 30, 2011 at one of their luxe properties you’ll not only get one or two free night stays, but $1 will be donated to UNICEF in support of malaria prevention efforts in Africa and polio, TB and measles immunizations worldwide. It’s a logical extension of Buy One, Give One (BOGO). Only this one could be called Buy One, Give One, Get One (BOGOGO). The ad at the left is from November 2009. I found it in the Alden Keene Cause Marketing Database. But the promotion has been picked up again in 2011 and ends this month. The donation amount…$1… is modest. But high end brands like the ones in the Luxury Collection face a branding and pricing challenge in offering a larger donation amount. A room with two double beds at The Phoenician in Phoenix... one of their 12 properties in th...

There’s been some chatter recently in the blogosphere and elsewhere about strategic cause marketing. That is, if you’re a sponsor, ensuring that your sponsorship of the cause bears some rational relationship to your business. The effort on the left from Montblanc, the fountain pen maker, pretty much passes muster. From June 2009 to May 2010 when you bought this special edition pen, called the Meisterstruck Signature for Good Edition, 10 percent of the purchase price went to a UNICEF education programs because “The ability to read and write is a fundamental human right and the most important asset to children.” (For examples of other Montblanc 'donation pens,' click here . For this campaign, Montblanc set a minimum donation of $1.5 million. And while we're at it, let us now take a moment to praise a campaign that sets a minimum donation, but not a maximum. Huzzahs to Montblanc)! I would have said that parents who can feed and shelter their children is a child’s most importan...

Pop quiz: You have an enviably large promotional budget for your cause marketing campaign and you need a celebrity. Do you choose Marcus Samuelsson, celebrity chef? Or do you choose Harrison Ford, the man who has sold more than $3.6 billion in domestic movie tickets in his career and whose planes are worth more than you’ll make in your lifetime? The answer is, of course, it depends. Marcus Samuelsson is co-owner of Acquavit restaurant in New York City, plus several others, and has a wonderfully interesting personal history. He’s originally from Ethiopia, but was adopted along with his older sister by a Swedish couple when he was three years old. He took an early interest in cooking and trained in Sweden, Switzerland and Austria before coming to the United States at age 21 and promptly establishing a reputation as a chef to be reckoned with. He has a philanthropic bent , a brilliant smile and is married to the lovely model Gate Maya Haile. By contrast, Harrison Ford is so rich and fam...

GamesThatGive.net allows you to play common video games like Solitaire, Sudoku, and Blackjack for free, while making a sliver of a donation to one of 13 nonprofit charities. Here's how it works. Behind each of the games a static advertisement runs for sponsors like Domino's Pizza, Dial, Pepsi or others. GamesThatGive.net donates 70 percent of ad revenue to those charities, including the United Way, UNICEF, and the Wilderness Society. As of this writing on Sept. 22, 2009, the donations counter at the top of the home page read: "GamesThatGive has donated $2032.13 to charity." I put a handful of questions to Brian Reich, GamesThatGive's principal evangelist, about where the idea came from, how it works, and how it's been received by charities and sponsors. His responses follow. How did the idea come about for GamesthatGive.net? The idea came, mostly, from the experiences of our CEO, Adam Archer. He traveled the world a few years back and upon his return to th...

Made my annual pilgrimage to the nearby  Hallmark Gold Crown store for Valentine’s Day (Feb 14) and couldn’t pass up the musical card display featuring songs by Celine Dion and benefiting  UNICEF . This isn’t transactional cause marketing, but rather a licensing deal with Hallmark that dates to 2006. In the course of the year, Hallmark offers more than 100 cards… only a few of which are musical cards… carrying the UNICEF branding.  I like the campaign. And I applaud the poor devil that had to clear the music rights. That is yeoman’s work, my friends. But to me the messaging seems a little… to coin a term… 'Hall- mawkish .' The line “where every child is free… simply to be a child” reads like a half measure. I know my Americanism is showing here, but don’t we want the world’s children to be free? Period. End of sentence? And the opening line, “UNICEF and Celine Dion are committed to creating a world where children can grow up happy, healthy and hopeful…” draws too mu...

Strategic cause marketing like strategic philanthropy is one of those things to strive for. And as a blogger it's a topic that is all but evergreen. Strategic cause marketing means there’s a logical connection between the cause and the company. So, a logical charity for a hair salon to support is Locks of Love,  which makes wigs for people who have lost their hair due to a medical condition. A logical charity for children’s book publisher is a children’s literacy cause. A restaurant chain might choose a hunger charity, etc. But certainly not all cause marketing is strategic. Nor should it be. Imagine how limited a cause with great affinity like UNICEF would be if they limited their sights to only those companies that sell to children in the developing world. In the last few days I’ve come across two splendid examples of strategic cause marketing and strategic philanthropy. The first is from a pair of cheeky product designers who run an online retail outlet called ‘ the .’...

Dear Pampers: Just a quick note of thanks for your 1 pack = 1 vaccine campaign benefiting UNICEF. You may know that I love these ‘buy one, give one’ campaigns. They’re the best thing to come along in cause-related marketing in a long time. Consumers respond to them. They understand them. They feel good about participating in them. And they can generate crazy word-of-mouth. Your execution has been dynamite, including the follow-up FSI page in the August 31 Proctor & Gamble brandSAVER. Consumers want to know what happens after all the talk and promotion. I appreciate the transparency on your website as well that describes the exact donations made. Smart! I have to say something about the TV ad , too. It gives me a visceral reaction every time I see it. The moment when the Asian toddler waddles over for a hug and kiss is pure magic. Normally that would be a cheap visual cliché, but by gad it nearly reduces me to tears every time. And I’m not exactly your target market. The track… ‘D...

There I was, glancing through my March issue of Teen Vogue (don’t ask) when I came across the arresting image on the left. Like any fashion magazine, Teen Vogue is mostly ads of girls in fashionable attire in chichi locales. So this ad for a cause-related marketing campaign from Proctor & Gamble’s Tampax brand really pops. The campaign is another branch of Proctor & Gamble’s growing relationship with African causes and the United Nations. P&G’s water purifier brand Pur supports water purification efforts in Kenya. And P&G has been doing a packaged goods cause-related marketing campaign for UNICEF for at least a half-dozen years. The campaign is multi-faceted and, frankly, more than just a little confusing. You don’t need to go to the beinggirl.com/hero website to get that. Just look at the ‘logo soup’ at the bottom of the ad. Here’s the bones of the campaign: P&G is donating $1.4 million to HERO , a campaign of the United Nations Association (UNA-USA). The money ...

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...

Celebrities Are Just Like You and Me, Only They Get to Stay Free at the Mandarin Oriental There are two kinds of celebrities in the world; those that are in the Mandarin Oriental ad campaign running right now and those whose agents are trying to get them in. It’s an image ad campaign for the 17 hotels that are part of the Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group. In it celebrities including I.M. Pei, Zubin Mehta, Helen Mirren, Elle McPherson, and Dame Edna-Barry Humphries are photographed in settings of their choice and they name their favorite Mandarin property. Dame Edna-Barry Humphries get to name two! Every celebrity appearance carries with it a $10,000 donation to the charity of the celebrity’s choosing. Neeson’s charity is UNICEF and his short profile on the Mandarin website includes a UNICEF logo and link. Most of the other charities are smaller and less prominent than UNICEF. It goes almost without saying that the donation amount is too small to be meaningful. I don’t know how the deal is...

Elmo’s World of Slick Cause-Related Marketing I confess I don’t have the experience abroad to judge if it’s a good idea to take Sesame Street … the 38-year-old American children’s TV show… to places like Egypt, Bangladesh, and South Africa. And I’m not sure to what degree the shows “work” in those countries. (In fact, neither are Sesame Street ’s producers. Here’s what their president and CEO Gary E. Knell wrote in their 2005 annual report : “As we’ve said before, we don’t pretend that media can, by itself, solve the many problems of the world, but we do believe­­­—and research confirms—that they can contribute to the solutions.”) I do, however, have a background in cause-related marketing and this 2-part ad, which appeared in BabyTalk Magazine in May 2006, leaves me cold. As we’ll see, even though it has the veneer of cause-related marketing, it’s actually just an advertisement for one of Sesame Street ’s licensees. American Greetings … the greeting card giant… was a Sesam...

Let Us Now Praise Good Cause-Related Marketing So far there are six posts at causerelatedmarketing.biz and everyone of them has been critical to one degree or another. The point of this blog isn’t to flame every cause-related campaign I see as bad or inadequate. I expect there’s more to be learned more from good campaigns than bad ones. So, on All Hallow’s Eve I want to back off my criticism to praise a cause-related campaign from a company that consistently gets cause-related marketing right, Proctor & Gamble. This cause-themed FSI for UNICEF, which dropped circa September-October 2006 is one of Proctor & Gamble’s monthly “brandSAVER coupon booklets.” I haven’t kept count, but the cause-themed brandSAVERs seem to appear at least quarterly. They’ve done a year-end FSI for Special Olympics for many years and I’ve seen special versions for the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, VH-1 Save the Music, and others. They’ve done an FSI for UNICEF for at least four years. Dur...