Cause Marketing

Most retail in America is promotion-driven and tied to seasons and holidays: Christmas, Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Graduation, Back to School, Thanksgiving, New Years, etc. But not every company can promote around all of those seasons. For a chocolate company the main seasons are Christmas, Valentines and Mother’s Day. Many’s the small chocolatier that does banner business in those three seasons and then limps through the rest of the year. (This is true for certain nonprofits as well. There are dozens of nonprofit ballet companies whose fortunes rise and fall for the year depending on how well their annual production of the Nutcracker does each Christmas season). But if a chocolatier… or any other retailer… could add an extra season, well then that could be pretty sweet addition to the bottom line. For National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, Shari’s Berries , which sells hand-dipped strawberries, truffles and the like is offering a number of pink ribbon strawberry pac...

One of the coins of the realm in cause marketing is the use of celebrities. The right celebrity, used well, can draw attention to your cause marketing campaign, lend it legitimacy, bring new resources to bear, and more. You can try and recruit celebrities yourself, or, for a fee, you can use a matching service. One such service provider is Limelight Media , founded by Wendy Dutwin. That's her on the left. In the cause marketing space Limelight Media has worked on programs such as Hilary Swank with Pantene's Beautiful Lengths program; Brooke Shields with Tupperware's Chain of Confidence initiative; and Tim Gunn’s Addressing Psoriasis campaign. I put a few questions to Wendy on how her service works: 1). What can a sponsor/cause legitimately ask a celebrity to do in a cause marketing effort? It really depends on the scope of the campaign. If it’s PR initiative only, typically a contract between a brand and a celebrity will include a certain number of TV & Print Interviews...

Pizza Hut is currently raising funds for the UN's World Food Program using the paper icon at the left, a mobile phone text fundraising effort, and celebrity support from songstress Christina Augilera. The campaign called From Hunger to Hope also invites direct support through the campaign website . From Hunger to Hope comes from Yum Brands , franchisor of Pizza Hut, KFC, Taco Bell, Long John Silver’s, and A&W, and the campaign crosses all of its restaurants. In 2009 the effort generated $22.5 million for the WFP and other hunger agencies, which translated into 90 million meals. Twenty-two million dollars is a laudable, even herculean effort. But consider that Yum operates 37,000 locations. Some locations will do more and some will do much less, but to raise $22.5 million each store needs to average $608. With so many locations, a modest improvement in per store fundraising translates to huge numbers in the collective total. For instance, if per store fundraising goes up to $...

I began this blog four years ago this month. This is posting number 438. The cause marketing blog gets 5,000 visits and nearly 8,000 page views a month. In four years the blog has received nearly 150,000 visits and 225,000 page views. In those first few weeks, a good chunk of the traffic came from one or more people in Hyderabad, India. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to encourage me to keep going. In October 2006 I thought I was writing for U.S., Canadian and maybe U.K. audiences, since I write in English. I know a great number of people in India speak English, but that traffic from Hyderabad surprised and delighted me nonetheless. Now, while the bulk of the traffic still comes from Stateside readers, 30% comes from readers outside North America. The blog gets hundreds of readers from places like Sri Lanka, Vietnam, Bangladesh, Bulgaria and Kenya. I started the blog because in 2006 most of the available information on cause marketing was advocacy; i.e. here’s why you should undertak...

The direct selling industry in the United States… think Amway, Avon, Mary Kay… was a $28.33 billion business in 2009, although the more interesting number may be the 16.1 million salespeople involved in direct sales. Philanthropically Avon and Mary Kay both are strongly… although not exclusively… involved with women’s issues. So who does Amway support with its philanthropy and cause marketing? The short answer is children and children’s charities. But there’s more to it than that. By itself Amway has 3 million Independent Business Owners (IBOs) and operations in 80 countries. Suffice it to say that just writing a check to the local children’s hospital in Grand Rapids, Michigan where Amway is headquartered… which Amway’s founders have done in a big way… isn’t entirely satisfying for the IBO in Japan or Singapore or even Canada. Amway Global, ironically the North American affiliate of Amway Corp., mainly spreads its charitable dollars to three causes: Boys and Girls Clubs of America ...

As a marketer and a consumer I love Target. The house brands are terrific. The Target I shop most frequently seems to have more checkers that any Walmart I’ve ever been in. I love all the 'cheap chic' they sell. And their branding is dynamite. That big red bulls eye, the funky, super-visual TV ads, the 5% of income to charity. The partnerships with St. Jude and other nonprofits. It’s all great. Of course in the great recession Walmart’s still kicking Target’s can , even though Target swears Walmart’s prices aren’t any better. Sometimes it seems to me that a contributing factor to Walmart’s continuing domination of Target is that all the damn branding Target does sometimes gets in the frickin’ way. Case in point is this ad from the August 30, 2010 People magazine. The promotion involves Baby Buggy , Jessica Seinfeld’s 501 (c)(3) nonprofit that donates infant and baby supplies to homeless shelters, parent programs, court child centers, and the like. Throughout the year-long pro...

Earthjustice , a nonprofit environmental law firm used Foursquare to squeeze data out of participating commuters and a $50,000 donation from an anonymous donor. But the Foursquare promotion didn't pull you into Earthjustice’s offices in Oakland, California. Instead, the promotion invited commuters to check in at four donated billboards spread across the Bay Area Rapid Transit system. The check-ins triggered a $10 donation up to a maximum of $50,000. More than 5,700 commuters checked in at the ads and the donation goal was met. That’s one of the ads at the left. I like the use of Foursquare in this effort and I know that as a marketer I’d love to get my hands on all the data Foursquare collects. But The New York Times is touting this as the new hotness for Foursquare and nonprofits. I’m dubious. When you check in at Foursquare at, say, Sarah’s Shake Shack, there’s a chance to physically engage with the brand: eat the product, for instance, or meetup with friends. Foursquare also ...