Cause Marketing

A recent flyer from a local grocer with about 10 stores in the chain features two cause marketing campaigns and is timed specifically for the holiday season, one for the local food bank and one for the Salvation Army’s Angel Tree program. For me this raises a question; regardless of how generous the intent of the grocer, how many cause campaigns can a retailer reasonably sustain at a time? Although these are both full-page images, I didn’t crop them so that you could get a clear sense of the amount of space the grocer, called Macys, devoted to both causes in the same flyer. The food bank effort is in some ways an analog to the Chamber of Commerce paper ico n campaign I profiled on Monday, November 15, although it is not the same effort. And it’s not a paper icon campaign. When you’re in the store, purchase a bag of food and pick your favorite team and the food goes to the associated food bank. The team whose fans donate the most food and money get bragging rights for the year. Of cour...

We see evidence of big cause marketing all the time. You know, cause marketing so massive… like the Red campaign or Boxtops for Education … that it seems to create its own gravity. Plainly, when properly designed, cause marketing scales up very well, thank you very much. But what about the little guys? Does cause marketing scale down as well as up? Here’s why this is an important question. In the States small businesses… generally companies with 500 or fewer employees… represent 99 percent of all businesses that have employees, and over the last 15 years, small businesses have generated 64 percent of all new jobs . Small business is also really dynamic. Small businesses rise and fail quickly in round after round of Schumpeter-style ‘ creative destruction .’ Likewise, most 501(c)(3) nonprofit charities in the United States are small. There’s only one American Red Cross with its $4 billion budget , but at least 1 million smaller charities. Is cause marketing only for the top one percen...

This is the second half of an interview with University of Georgia Journalism Student Cathryn McIntosh on the subject of cause-related marketing. Read the first half here . As before, I've edited this a little bit; this time because of some typos and to clarify some answers. Yikes! Needless to say as a former journalism student myself, I haven't been a good mentor when it comes to providing clean copy. So do what I say Cathryn, not what I do. Ms. McIntosh's questions are in italics and my answers follow. Do you think people take time to investigate the causes tied to the items they purchase? (i.e. A leopard printed bracelet “to save the leopards in Timbuktu?”) That depends. By now I think we all know what the American Cancer Society is about or the Heart Association. Those causes either move you or they don’t. Newer entities like Susan G. Komen and Make-A-Wish probably have pretty good top of mind awareness, too. For the majority of us, those charities don’t require a lot o...

... It Works, Cause-Related Marketing Works! The Utah Food Bank is a monster of cause-related marketing in my state this time of year. The need for food is slightly higher in this season, but the fact is they use the generosity of the Christmas season to generate food donations that will see them into next summer; that’s one of the reasons why they ask for canned goods. To cite just a few examples, right now all the TV advertising for Jiffy Lube , the quick oil-change outfit with 70 locations in the state, highlights their long-standing relationship to the Utah Food Bank. TV ads on behalf of the Utah Food Bank are also airing from Smiths (a grocery chain that’s a part of Kroger), Wells Fargo (a national bank), and Siegfried & Jensen (personal injury law firm), among others. There’s also direct mail campaign provided by the sponsors, and newspaper and radio ads. I haven't seen it yet, but they usually do a publicity stunt for public relations purposes as well. I’ll do a fuller ...