Cause Marketing

With just a few more than 90 days before the end of the year, here are seven easy steps you could take in the next 30 minutes to improve your cause marketing career before year end. Make an Appointment before Thanksgiving with Your Opposite Number at Your Partner Charity or Sponsor. Finish reading this list then call your partner at the cause or sponsor you work with and plan a casual meeting. The explicit purpose of the meeting, whether you admit to or not, is to help improve your personal relationship with this person, even if the relationship is already good. Remember what Covey said about trust: when trust is high, everything goes faster, costs less, and more pleasant. You almost can’t work too much on maintaining and building trust. Remember: how well you work with your colleague helps determines your success, their success and the success of your campaign. If you two don’t work well together your career could suffer and you’ll be less likely to achieve key goals. Create a S...

Yogi Berra, the former Yankee player and manager was famed for his fractured English, or Yogi-isms. For instance, Berra once said, "a nickel ain't worth a dime anymore." And, "it's like deju vu all over again." (The drawing at the left of Berra is by the talented caricaturist Jerry Breen ). He also said, "you can observe a lot just by watching." To that I'd add, you can learn a lot about what reporters think about cause marketing by the questions they ask. I get calls from reporters wanting quotes about the practice of cause marketing. I know David Hessekiel at the Cause Marketing Forum and Joe Waters, author of Cause Marketing for Dummies take plenty of calls as well. The reporter I spoke few weeks back asked the questions in bold and my responses follow. I won't reveal her name or publication until her piece is published. Until then, get a sense about what's on reporter's minds about cause marketing by reading the questions she a...

Pathology, that is trying to figure out what went wrong, is both fun and entertaining. Jerry Bruckheimer, producer of the CSI franchise on television among many other production credits, personally made $113 million! in 2011 thanks in part to our fascination with the pathology of crime. Even when it comes to cause marketing this fascination with the bad is strong. Many more people find the Cause Marketing Blog because they searched on ‘bad cause marketing’ and similar search terms than found it by searching for ‘good cause marketing’ and equivalent terms. Yesterday's post, was my annual list of the best cause marketing of 2011 . You asked for it, so here it is listed in order of the date of the original post; The 10 Worst Cause Marketing Efforts of 2011: Faux Cause Marketing Ad From Groupon Bombs on Super Bowl. After watching Groupon’s first Super Bowl ad campaign, all I could do was scratch my head and ask; “Holy crap, what was Groupon thinking ?” They ran two ads: one started o...

Dear Faithful Readers: In January 2011 I'll post my much anticipated annual best and worst cause marketing campaigns for 2010. But this year I want to make it more interactive. So once a week for the next 12 weeks I'll ask you to vote for your favorite cause marketing of a given month. Up first, January 2010. Simply follow the bit.ly links which lead straight to the post, read it, and then vote for your fav. Thanks, Paul