Cause Marketing

Zynga has been using cause marketing for more than two years now and other game developers are taking note. Mobile game developer XEOPlay offers Tilt World that helps to reforest Madagascar, the world’s fourth largest island and a hotspot for biodiversity, owing to its relative isolation. Lemurs, a member of the primate family, are the nation-state’s most recognized denizens. Just as Lemurs are a branch of the primate family Tilt World is related to Mario Brothers and Pac-Man/Ms. Pac-Man. The goal is for Flip, a tadpole, to eat carbon molecules, plant mushrooms, recycle bottle caps and capture fireflies as an alternative energy source.   There’s 15 levels and points earned in the game translate to tree seeds purchased for and on behalf of the tree-planting charity WeForest. XEOPlay’s goal is to plant 1 million trees in Madagascar, which suffers from the effects of deforestation. My description makes it all sound a little bit earnest, but Tilt World looks fun. I haven’t h...

On the heels of my posts on games and cause marketing in this space and at MediaPost.com , people have been asking me about how so-called 'gamification' can be used in cause marketing. Part of the answer has already been provided by Joe Waters (and others) in their coverage of Foursquare, which can be easily utilized in cause marketing. Zynga and its suite of games have done meaningful cause marketing, notably for disaster relief in Haiti and Japan. A handful of sites including Gamesthatgive.net (whose revenue model is based on advertising) offer donations to nonprofits based on how long you play standard faire. Plus 3, a social networking site for people increasing their physical fitness does much the same, albeit with fewer gamified elements. Big brands like Coke and General Mills have built games into their cause marketing strategies. Even still, gamification and cause marketing are still basically at the Atari stage in their co-development. Pong was the start of video/com...

One trend I expect to see more of in 2012 is the mashup of cause marketing and video/computer games. Certainly the market is huge. The Entertainment Software Association reports that 72 percent of American households play computer/video games. And it’s not just teens and preteens. The average game player is age 37. And while video/computer game players are more likely to be male than female, across the board 42 percent of players are female (which is about the same gender mix as the NFL's audience ). That it’s a 60:40 male to female strikes me as a positive for some businesses and causes. Men can be a hard audience to reach, especially if you can’t afford the premiums that come with sponsoring professional sports or buying sports television airtime. Cause marketing has already been successfully undertaken by Zynga, makers of Farmville and Mafia Wars on behalf of the victims of the Haiti Earthquake of 2010. In 2011, they did another relief effort on behalf the victims of the Japane...

It can’t come to soon for those in Haiti, but cause marketers… including some from smaller entities… are using the power of cause marketing to support relief efforts in the earthquake battered country. What follows is a representative few. But it’s an important list because it demonstrates that you don’t have to be an A-list celebrity, like George Clooney and pals , to do your part. If you see more examples of cause marketing on behalf of Haiti and Haitians I hope you’ll either email me at aldenkeene @ gmail [dot] com or comment below. One of the most prominent examples comes from Zynga, creator of the virtual worlds and games including Farmville, Fishville, Zynga Poker, and Mafia Wars. When you certain buy virtual items from Zynga for use in those games, a donation is made to the U.N’s World Food Programme. The donation to Haiti relief efforts from Zynga users is already north of $1.5 million ! Paper Culture , an online stationary story, is donating “100 percent of all proceeds from i...