Cause Marketing

  In its very earliest days, Apple Computer donated a lot of computer equipment and software to American schools. I can’t remember Steve Jobs or anyone else from Apple talking about why they did it. But I’ve long suspected that Apple wanted to be not only the computer of choice for schools, but schoolchildren. Because schoolchildren grow up to have mortgages and disposable income, and they want to buy electronics and computers from a familiar name. In the case of one of my nephews, now an engineer, that’s exactly how it played out. He’s the family geek and an Apple aficionado and loyalist. As a result of his advocacy, so too is the rest of his family. And so I wonder about this in-kind cause marketing effort from Bail Hotline Bail Bonds. Tomorrow, on Friday, Sept. 14, 2012, employees from the company will stand outside elementary schools in San Bernardino and three other California cities and give away 1,000 backpacks to students as they get out of school. This will be the ...

With the approaching start of the new school year Lysol brand of disinfectant has a cause marketing campaign that awards $25,000 in prizes to the school with the highest average attendance from November 1 to 30, 2011. If you’re like me it took me a couple of beats to understand what school attendance has to do with Lysol. But even after I got it the Lysol Blue Ribbon Attendance Challenge doesn’t seem to do all the things Lysol needs it to do. Here’s how the Lysol Blue Ribbon Attendance Challenge works. You must register your school online in the contest at Lysol.com. The contest runs throughout the month of November and the winning school gets $25,000 in prizes. As of this writing the contest’s official handbook wasn’t yet available online. As a part of the promotion Lysol offers a school curriculum on germs and prevention that teachers can use in their classrooms. That’s really… um… earnest. But it seems like half an effort. What Lysol really needs out of this effort i...