Cause Marketing

On Wednesdays in my market all the major grocers insert their flyer in the local newspaper. Yesterday all of them save WalMart had a cause marketing element in their respective flyers. Here’s a review of each: Smith’s is owned by grocery giant Kroger, WalMart’s largest domestic grocery competitor. Their campaign benefits the USO, the charity that aids members of the military and their families and now celebrating its 70th anniversary. The USO reusable bag is an extension of a campaign for the USO Kroger announced in July, 2011 . Participating stores have coin donation canisters at check stands and/or ask customers to round up their purchases to the nearest dollar to benefit the USO. The full campaign lasts one year with a goal of raising $1 million. A limited promotion with Procter & Gamble has already generated $250,000. In addition, the #47 Kroger NASCAR features USO branding this season and Kroger locations with medical clinics called ‘The Little Clinic’ donated $1 for each spor...

On monday, May 23, 2011 the post was about the current American zeitgeist for supporting the troops . The post on Thursday May 19, 2011 was about how cause marketing is a form of co-branding . Too bad I didn’t wait until today to post on those separate subjects because I could have killed two birds with one post. Yesterday I got the Lowe’s circular at left that features co-branded cause marketing with PepsiCo benefiting the troops. Called Summer Salute Program, here’s how it works: PepsiCo and Lowe’s will donate $1 million to unnamed charity or charities that support the troops and their families. Part of Pepsi’s piece of this includes their NASCAR drivers Jimmie Johnson (Gatorade), Jeff Gordon (Pepsi Max) and Dale Earnhardt Jr. (AMP Energy/Mountain Dew), all of whom will run their cars with Summer Salute paint schemes. All are affiliated with the famed Hendrick Motorsports team. Johnson, of course, drives the Lowe’s car. To give the campaign a little more emotional depth, Lowe’s and P...

Soldiering Through the First Quarter Blues It’s the day after Christmas in the States and the malls and stores are full again, this time with people returning gifts, but also people spending the gift cards they got yesterday. Gift cards, or stored value cards, are a growing Christmas gift trend in North America. Before the holiday, the National Retail Foundation projected gift card sales would balloon to $24.81 billion in 2006, a $6 billion increase over 2005’s $18.48 billion. Consumers like gift cards because they maximize their choices. Retailers love them because “ Unused Gift Cards Give Retailers $8 Billion Boon ,” to quote a recent headline from the E-Commerce Times. That is, one-third of the value on those gift cards is never redeemed and falls to the retailers' bottom line. Nice, eh? So it’s something of a curiosity that Home Depot ran this cause-related marketing ad in a flyer that came with the local newspaper on Saturday, December 24. Here’s the offer. Use a Home Depot gi...