Cause Marketing

Cone Communications released a new survey on Tuesday, March 27, 2012 about consumer expectations and understanding of corporate green claims, and the results are both a wake-up call and an opportunity for companies messaging their green bona fides. In the study, called the 2012 Cone Green Gap Trend Tracker, Cone found that consumers just aren’t willing to do their due diligence when it comes to the environmental impacts of a company’s products. Ergo, 73 percent of consumers want companies to provide more environmental information on products directly on the packaging. Another 71 percent wish companies would do a better job helping them understand the environment terms they use. Some 36 percent believe that common environmental marketing terms like ‘green’ or ‘environmentally friendly’ mean that product has a positive effect on the environment. Another 18 percent believe that such terms mean that the products’ effect on the environment is neutral. Read Cone’s press materials for more r...

The military, like your cause, has a sense of mission. Sometimes their mission is very narrowly defined and time-limited. When a squad goes out on patrol at night their mission may be reconnoiter, or intercept. Sometimes the military's mission is very broad and open-ended, like ending another country’s ability to wage asymmetrical warfare. Given that similarity, causes and sponsors might consider developing an approach to mission that the military uses called ‘commander’s intent.’ According to Wikipedia , it means: “An intent describing military focused operations and it is a publicly stated description of the end-state as it relates to forces (entities, people) and terrain, the purpose of the operation, and key tasks to accomplish. It is developed by a small group, e.g. staff, and a commander.” It’s not just the purpose and the aim of the action, it’s their implications. Perhaps most importantly, the commander’s intent gives subordinates the basis for their own initiative. As suc...

Scarcely a week goes by that someone doesn’t release a study or survey about cause marketing. And yet there’s still some research I’d like to see. Since the New Year I’ve seen studies, findings or surveys related to cause marketing from the following: IEG projects cause marketing spending to grow in 2012 by 3.1 percent to $1.73 billion. Among other findings, the fourth Edelman Good Purpose Consumer Study found that the emerging markets of Mexico, Brazil, China and India were most willing to buy a brand that supports a cause. Landor Associates released its annual Global Corporate Reputation Index and highlighted the cause marketing work of Google and Ford. An outfit called Wide Angle surveyed its consumer panel and found them more willing to give $1 from a purchase rather than winning a meal at restaurant they’ve been wanting to try. Nielsen surveyed Vietnamese consumers and found that 80 percent prefer to do business with companies that seem to be giving back. That’s a reasonably broad...

In a post about Starbuck CEO Howard Schultz at theatlantic.com , ‘Jack Flack’ (aka Paul Pendergrass) takes a swipe about the effectiveness of cause marketing that isn’t supported by the facts. Flack’s post is about the fact that Schultz is at the top of the ‘spin’-cycle right now. The stock is at an all-time high, in Dec 2011 Schultz was named Fortune magazine’s Business Leader of the Year and the CEO has launched some audacious initiatives that aren’t directly about selling coffee. In September 2011 Schultz pledged that he would stop making donations to incumbent politicians until they demonstrated a credible plan to address the Federal budget deficit. More than 100 other CEOs also pledged to withhold political donations from incumbents. Later in the year Starbucks unveiled its ‘Indivisible’ wristband effort, which generates loanable funds to small businesses nationwide. I’ve covered both issues here and here . Schultz, says Flack, is a flavor of the month. I don’t disagree. Unless S...

Last Thursday, March 22, 2012 I took a call from a small businessperson I called Roberta who asked in effect, ‘how can my small company work with a cause to benefit us both?’ I posted about her call last Friday . She had contacted two breast cancer charities about cause marketing; a local one I called Athena Charity and a national one I identified as Artemis Charity. (All the names have been changed). Athena put Roberta off and Artemis tried to lock her into an existing event for a cool $5,000. In my post on Friday, I compared Artemis Charity’s offerings to those from a local TV station, which are similarly high-priced and inflexible. Neither option was well-suited to a small business like Roberta’s. Roberta has a generous impulse and she wants to help, but her ability to do so is severely limited by the size of her business. Moreover, Roberta was interested in cause marketing, in part, because she needed something more from the relationship besides good feelings. Imagine instead a cau...

Yesterday I took a call from a small business owner in Chicago… I’ll call her ‘Roberta’… who wanted to know how cause marketing really worked because it wasn’t working so far for her! Roberta owns a picture framing business and what she meant was that she had made several inquiries at two breast cancer charities. One was smaller and local the other was larger and national. We’ll call the local one Athena Charity and the national one Artemis Charity. (All the names have been changed to protect everyone’s privacy). What Roberta had in mind for Athena Charity was some kind of promotion on the organization’s Facebook page. But the people at Athena said that might jeopardize their 501(c)(3) status. Two things: 1). Roberta has no desire to endanger Athena’s 501(c)(3) status. 2). Either the Athena staffers didn’t know what they were talking about or they were just trying to put Roberta off. Because you really have to work at it to make cause marketing illegal. Meanwhile, Artemis Charity wante...

My old friend, author Joe Waters, outed me yesterday in his post at Selfishgiving.com . As he pointed out I live and work in Utah, one of the least populated states in the Union. How small? We have three Congressional districts in the whole state. Metropolitan Boston, where Joe lives, has five by itself. So how is it possible that Utah could be, as my headline puts it, a capital of cause marketing? Before I answer that directly, let me first describe some cause marketers who started in Utah. Jay Vestal, now a VP at the Association of Zoos and Aquariums and formerly at both the National Forest Foundation and the National Park Foundation lives and works in Utah. Also in Utah is Jay Aldous, formerly of UNICEF. Jay’s now independent and his clients have included the Red Cross, Special Olympics, Habitat for Humanity and other blue chip nonprofits. The two Jays did more to further cause marketing in the very earliest days than anyone else I can think of short of Carol Cone. To paraphrase New...