Cause Marketing

Dillard’s, the department store chain, has a cause marketing effort benefiting Feeding America that hits all the high points, until… cue the record scratch sound-effect… it doesn’t. So what is Dillard’s doing right? It’s a pretty good list. First off Dillard’s choose a venerable cause marketing partner, Feeding America, which has an accomplished record in cause marketing and a vitally important mission. At $2 per transaction, the donation amount is generous. The promotion itself is activated through this ad in my local newspaper. There’s a QR code in the ad that leads to a video about Feeding America’s Give a Meal holiday campaign, so check off that cool tactical implementation. Dillard’s, which has about 300 stores across most of the country, specifically states that the total donation amount is as much as the value of $40,000 in meals, so mark off the transparency checkmark, too. So far, so good. But here’s where Dillard’s stumbles, the promotion in question is for bras, shapewear, s...

In an interview yesterday a reporter asked me why the match between the cause and sponsor is so vital in cause marketing. After all, what if a local welding shop in a small town was doing some kind of cause marketing for the local school. Wouldn’t that be affinity enough? My response went something like this: If you live a place where everyone knows your name it’s OK if the match between your firm and the cause is imperfect. People know your heart and are willing to give you a pass, whether or not they understand your cause marketing promotion. But if you live in a population center where not everyone you do business with is an acquaintance, then the match between your company and the cause matters a lot. My theory is that people just aren’t willing to invest the psychic energy it takes to figure out a lose affiliation between your company and the cause. The ad at the left from Fortune magazine is a case in point. The daredevil billionaire Sir Richard Branson, whose net worth is an est...

Implicit in any successful cause marketing campaign is the idea of affinity. Absent affinity, no cause marketing campaign is likely to soar Think about it, if children with cancer don’t affect you emotionally, intellectually or otherwise, then you’re not likely to support any cause marketing campaign on behalf of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. And it has to be the right kind of affinity. I may love American Idol and Randy Jackson, seen in the FSI (Free-Standing Insert) on the left. But if I don’t have a cat then his endorsement of 9Lives isn’t likely to convince me to buy a bag of dry cat food. So consider the case of this mailer from the Alden Keene Cause Marketing Database that mailed circa October 2004 from the cooperative marketing group for the Toyota Service Centers in my market. I get mailers like these about once a month. This one promoted a lube, oil and filter service featuring genuine Toyota parts. In the red burst on the left side is the cause marketing offer. Buy t...

Last night at dinner, a long-time reader and a new friend asked: 'How important is alignment between cause and sponsor? What about CEO passion? Here's how the discussion went. For years the best conventional wisdom in cause marketing has been that you choose a cause based on ‘strategic philanthropy.’ If you’re an oil company, you pick environmental causes. If you make ladies purses, you pick women’s causes. If you sell toys, you pick children’s causes. If you’re a restaurant, you pick hunger causes. If you sell organic foods, you support organic farmers. And indeed, academic researchers have consistently demonstrated that a clear alignment between cause and sponsors tend to pay off best. But it’s more complicated than that. For instance, an auto body shop might naturally align with, say, a high school that teaches auto body repair. But it would be an unusual for that ‘cause’ to have much affinity. On the other hand, if the owner of the body shop was a woman who had successfull...

I want to revisit a question that I’ve posted on before, but for which I haven’t found a satisfying answer: Is ‘any’ charity as good as one charity in cause-related marketing? Here’s the setup: for each item bought from the page in their circular to the left, the Rite Aid Foundation will donate $1 to local causes. The last time I posted on this subject was a campaign from Irwin Union Bank , which would donate $50 in your name to any charity you designated when you opened a certificate of deposit account for $10,000 or more. This Rite Aid campaign is different in that the putative donor can’t designate the charity to which the $1 would go. The Rite Aid Foundation bases its donations on funding requests it receives . So money only goes to local charities that make a request of the Rite Aid Foundation. Moreover, to add a wrinkle, Rite Aid already has a longstanding relationship with Children’s Miracle Network (CMN) with which both parties are evidently happy. The argument for partnering ...

CLOSE ON GUS -- He holds the envelope in his hand, trying not to show his excitement. But you can practically hear his heart pounding. Now, almost afraid to look, he slowly edges the check out of its envelope. He closes both eyes. Now he opens one eye and peeks. INSERT -- On the "Expenses" check emerging from the envelope. First we SEE the name: AUGUST GORMAN. And then...the amount: $85,789.80! GUS (o.s.) (quietly) Pennies from heaven. Round-Up Some Change Imagine if, like Richard Pryor’s character Gus Gorman in Superman III, that the charity you work with or for could get just a few pennies from each retail transaction. It wouldn’t necessarily mean an $85 million payday, but a bunch of pennies really adds up. (The excerpt is from scifiscripts.com . Superman III was written by David Newman and Leslie Newman). If the charity you work for or with generates a lot of affinity and has a particularly strong relationship with a retailer or a banking institution, you may be a likel...

[Blogger's Note: What follows is a letter I received from a startup nonprofit asking for advice on how to get an HIV/AIDS charity off the ground along with my response.] I am a Nurse that Dares to Care; my name is McKenzie English, LVN. Located in Riverside, California I just recently returned from Nigeria, where I was taken to two villages to hear of their concerns for the villagers and children. Then I got married. The faith based organization was started November, 2007. African American Initiatives for Africa Forgotten Ones, the website is http://www.aaiafchildrensponsorship.org/ http://www.aaiafchildrensponsorship.com/ is registered in Nigeria as NPO, here as sole prop. Have to get NPO for American tax exemption. So far not one sponsors, all out of my pocket for expenses. It is concerning 115 children that are unable to go to school or continue their education do to poverty in their environment. Also, as a nurse the spread of Hiv/Aids and not information is getting to the rura...

I have put off this post for a very long time, mostly because when I’ll tell clients and others the Secret Sauce of breakout cause-related marketing I’m more likely to get a look of doubt than a nod of understanding. Kinda like the look on my face when I read that Disney’s High School Musical brand has passed the $1 billion mark in operating profits . Here’s what prompts this post. People approach me all the time asking, “how is it that Children’s Miracle Network manages to raise more than $30 million every year with something as simple as a paper icon campaign . Or, “how does Susan G. Komen keep finding new sponsors when we can’t seem to find even one? Or, “explain to me how St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital raised more than $8 million from Chilis and their customers when fundraising campaigns at the casual dining chains have traditionally been death for other charities? I tell them the Secret Sauce to breakout cause-related marketing and then I get the look. Most people just don...

Walgreens and JDRF Right now at Walgreens…the giant pharmacy and retail store chain with more than 5,800 stores in the United States and Puerto Rico… they’re selling $1 paper icons for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF). This is an annual campaign and I bought one to gauge how it’s changed over the years. (Short list… they don’t do the shoe as a die cut anymore; the paper icon is now an 8¾ x 4¼ rectangle. Another interesting change; one side is now in Spanish). The icon has a bar code and Jacob, the clerk, scanned it and handed me a receipt as we finished the transaction. At the bottom was an 800-number keyed to a customer satisfaction survey. Dial the number, answer some questions and you’re entered into a drawing for $10,000 between now and the end of September 2007. I don’t know what their response rate is, but the $10,000 amount suggests that it’s pretty low. Taco Bell’s survey gives out $1,000 per week. At a regional seafood restaurant they give me a code that garner...

Cause-Marketing with a Hispanic Flavor In Thursday’s posting we raised the question posed by Gabriel Q., who works for a notable California multi-cultural consultancy: what about cause marketing to multi-cultural audiences? Gabriel was specifically interested in cause-related marketing and Hispanic-Latino audiences. Of course marketing to multi-cultural audiences can be damnably difficult because…just to take up just Hispanics-Latinos…Spanish speakers in the United States may come from dozens of countries. While Spanish itself is a lingua franca, there are hundreds of accents, and thousands of culturally-specific word meanings. Considering the 1951-mile-long border between Mexico and the United States, Mexican Spanish predominates, especially in the American Southwest. But there are also 3.3 million people born in the Caribbean and 2.1 million people born in South America now living in the United States, according to 2003 survey from the U.S. Census Bureau. The 2000 U.S. Census identif...

Affinity in Cause-Related Marketing Implicit in any successful cause-related marketing campaign is the idea of affinity. Absent affinity, no cause-related marketing campaign is likely to soar Think about it, if children with cancer don’t affect you emotionally, intellectually or otherwise, then you’re far less likely support any cause marketing campaign on behalf of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital . And it has to be the right kind of affinity. I may love American Idol and Randy Jackson, but if I don’t have a cat then his endorsement in this 9Lives FSI isn’t likely to convince me to buy a bag of dry cat food. So consider the case of this mailer, received at my home circa October 2004 from the cooperative marketing group for the Toyota Service Centers in my market. I get one of these mailers about once a month. This one advertised a lube, oil and filter service featuring genuine Toyota parts. In the red burst on the left side is the cause-marketing offer. Buy this service for $25....