Cause Marketing

If you’re a NASCAR fan imagine racing against other skilled fans in full pro-race conditions at Daytona. Or imagine a little 11 on 11 action against other amateurs playing “the beautiful game” in between periods at the finals of the World Cup. Nature Valley Granola Bars sponsors something very like that for amateur golfers in the United States called the Nature Valley Amateur . Meet the requirements, sign up, pay your fee (it’s never more than a couple hundred dollars) and you get to play against other amateur golfers on TPC courses across the country. The ad at the left is from Golf Digest in 2009, but the series is planned again for 2011. At the end of the Nature Valley Amateur series, a championship is held at the famed TPC Sawgrass in Florida, headquarters of the PGA! TPC means Tournament Players Club, a chain of golf clubs operated by the PGA and optimized for professional tournaments. Pretty cool, right? If you’re a competitive amateur golfer what a thrill it would be “step insid...

The September 27, 2007 Forbes magazine listed the value of the world’s top sponsored sports events, by the amount of money they generate per day. They are: Super Bowl… $336 million Summer Olympics…$176 million Fifa World Cup…$103 million NCAA Men’s Final Four…$90 million Winter Olympics…$82 million Rose Bowl…$72 million MLB World Series…$61 million Kentucky Derby…$59 million 9. NBA Finals…$58 million I notice that your nonprofit isn’t on the list. Indeed, no nonprofit is. There’s two reasons for that. Forbes compiled a list of the top sports event sponsorships. I’ll get to the second reason in a second. But cause marketing is… in the main… just a form of sponsorship. Why isn’t your cause making a $336 million per day like the Super Bowl? Think of all the advantages your cause enjoys. It has tremendous heart. It has a list of supporters who literally open their wallets for you several times a year. Some of your supporters are as passionate about your cause as any face-painting fan of...

An open letter to my friends in the nonprofit world. Dear Nonprofit Marketer: The Super Bowl was yesterday. It attracted the largest TV audience for any TV show ever in the United States with 106.5 million viewers. The Winter Olympics are a few days away. The World Cup is about 4 months from now. So I'm opening up Peabody's Way Back Machine to a post I wrote in 2007 that asks, 'why doesn't your cause generate as much money as any of those sports properties?' Short answer; it's a failure of imagination. The September 27, 2007 Forbes listed the value of the world’s top sponsored sports events, by the amount of money they generate per day. They are: 1. Super Bowl… $336 million 2. Summer Olympics…$176 million 3. Fifa World Cup…$103 million 4. NCAA Men’s Final Four…$90 million 5. Winter Olympics…$82 million 6. Rose Bowl…$72 million 7. MLB World Series…$61 million 8. Kentucky Derby…$59 million 9. NBA Finals…$58 million I notice that your nonprofit isn’t on the list....

Last September, at the request of San Francisco blogger Gayle Roberts, I posted my predictions on the future of cause-related marketing. With the coming of the New Year it makes sense to re-release this post. I have a spotty record predicting the future. I bought a Zip drive about a week before the first USB drive came out. And then, admiring the portability of said USB drives, I bought 2 of them with 56K of memory for about $50 a pop. I have two complete sets of the 1987 Topps baseball cards (which includes the rookie cards for Barry Bonds and Mark McGuire) still in the original shrink-wrap. They’re worth almost exactly what I paid for them. Or rather less, considering the ravages of inflation. (I also have a first edition of Hayduke Lives by Edward Abbey in very fine condition that has more than doubled in value. So, I’m not always dead wrong.) So imagine my surprise to get a short missive from Bay-area fundraising consultant Gayle Roberts asking me to weigh in on the topic...

An open letter to my friends in the nonprofit world. Dear Nonprofit Cause Marketer: The September 27 Forbes listed the value of the world’s top sponsored sports events, by the amount of money they generate per day. They are: 1. Super Bowl… $336 million 2. Summer Olympics…$176 million 3. Fifa World Cup…$103 million 4. NCAA Men’s Final Four…$90 million 5. Winter Olympics…$82 million 6. Rose Bowl…$72 million 7. MLB World Series…$61 million 8. Kentucky Derby…$59 million 9. NBA Finals…$58 million I notice that your nonprofit isn’t on the list. Indeed, no nonprofit is. There’s two reasons for that. Forbes compiled a list of the top sports event sponsorships. I’ll get to the second reason in a second. But cause-related marketing is… in the main… just a form of sponsorship. Why isn’t your cause making a $103 million per day like the World Cup? Think of all the advantages you enjoy. You have tremendous heart. You have a list of supporters who literally open their wallets for you several times ...