Cause Marketing

Kind Readers: Right now Americans are wrestling over the issue of the Affordable Health Care Act, aka 'Obamacare.' But there's no need to wrestle over the issue of the blogosphere's largest, most comprehensive cause marketing site. It's all right here! Now you can join the Cause Marketing Newsgroup and get the the thought-provoking insight, top-flight analysis and bleeding-edge cause marketing ideas delivered right to your email box every business day. It couldn’t be easier to subscribe. Simply send me your name and your email address to aldenkeene at gmail dot com. When you subscribe each new post comes directly to your email box every business day. And when you subscribe you'll get a PDF copy of "Five Flavors of Cause Marketing," a matrix which explains the elements of Cause Marketing and includes specific examples. It's a great brainstorming tool that helps ensure your cause marketing campaigns have all the appropriate components. Did I mentio...

Patagonia, that region of Chile and Argentina at the southern tip of South America famous for its beauty and end-of-the-earth ruggedness, had a terrible fire in 2011 that left vast areas denuded of trees. Now a Santiago, Chile-based cause called Reforest Patagonia is working to replant a million trees in four of Chile’s national parks and reserves, and they’re asking for your help. Here’s how it works: they ask that you go to www.reforestpatagonia.com and donate $4. They’ll plant a tree in your name and email you the gps coordinates of where your tree will be planted. The website is reminiscent in its own way of the fundraising platform called www.supportewall.com which enables nonprofits to easily set up online donor walls. I conducted a Twitter interview… my first ever… with Brenna Loury, an American by birth, but a Chilean by adoption. She got her start in Chile working for Habitat for Humanity there. That’s my first question and Brenna’s response in 140 characters or less at th...

Twice now I’ve written about cause marketing campaigns that can be summed up in six-words. Both times I heard back from readers inspired to pen their own cause marketing summation in six-words. Now I’m coming back to the topic because L.L. Bean, the Maine retailer and catalog company, is using a six-word statement as a tagline for its cause marketing effort called 'Million Moment Mission.' The six-word line is; “You Share. We Give. Kids Win.” Here’s how it works: any time you perform a qualifying action… a like on Facebook, a Tweet, submit a story and/or photo about your experience with L.L. Bean’s merchandise or in the great outdoors…the company will donate $1 to programs for kids from the National Park Foundation. The tagline, therefore, distills the campaign very well. The Million Moment Mission is a promotion in celebration of Bean’s 100th year in business. The campaign started on January 1, 2012 and wraps on December 31, 2012. The total donation is capped at $1 million. ...

Not all cause marketing is meant to get directly you to buy something. Sometimes it’s meant to get you to try something you might not otherwise consider. In this instance, AAA of Northern California, an auto club that also includes the states of Nevada and Utah, wants their members to see how competitive their auto insurance rates are. And the offer is almost ripped from the headlines of today’s news. When you call for an auto insurance quote, AAA of Northern California will make a $5 donation to unnamed groups that support state parks in California, Nevada, and Utah, up to a total of $100,000.  Although all three states are facing budgetary pressures in the downturn, the Golden State has been especially hard hit. California has plans to shutter as many as 70 of the state’s 279 state parks on July 1, 2012. Aside from the timeliness, this cause marketing promotion is an especially close fit between AAA and the cause. Members of auto clubs, it goes almost without saying...

What do affluent travelers want from airlines, hotels, resorts, tour operators and cruise lines when it comes to corporate social responsibility? Conde Nast Traveler , whose magazine has about 810,000 affluent subscribers asked its readers some of those very questions and more and published the results in September 2011. Here are responses to select Conde Nast Traveler questions: Ninety-three percent said travel companies should be responsible for 'protecting the environment.' What might protecting the environment look like according to Traveler readers:? 63 percent said building energy-efficient buildings. 76 percent said using solar power 69 percent said reuse towel (there’s the low-handing fruit for any hotel or resort) 63 percent said install low-flow toilets and showers 54 percent said use less air conditioning 51 percent said reuse wastewater 12 percent said provide carbon offsets through fees The long-hanging fruit there is plainly reusing towels. Likewise, ...

Back in 2007 and 2008 Hamburger Helper ran a fun cause marketing promotion called My Hometown Helper that I don’t remember at all. In fact, there’s nothing about it at www.myhometownhelper.com, the campaign’s old website. Dial up that URL and you’ll be redirected to hamburgerhelper.com. If not for the Alden Keene Cause Marketing Database and the long tail of the Internet, My Hometown Helper would be just a distant memory for the Hamburger Helper brand manager and the recipients of the grants.   Here’s what a press release from General Mills , which owns the Hamburger Helper brand, said about the campaign in February 2008. “Today, Hamburger Helper announces the call for entries to the 2008 "My Hometown Helper" grant program, a nationwide initiative that lends a "helping hand" to local groups making a  difference in their community. People looking to improve their hometown --  from helping fund a volunteer fire department, to restoring a town landmark, to supporti...

I’m delighted to offer a guest post today by my friend and cause marketing colleague David Hessekiel, the founder and president of the Cause Marketing Forum and the co-author of the new book on cause marketing called Good Works , out as June 5, 2012. David co-wrote Good Works with marketing legend Phillip Kotler and Nancy Lee. Today David tackles the issue of just how big cause marketing is and how we can get to a more meaningful measure of its size and dimensions. For years the only calculation we’ve had is IEG’s annual projection of how much companies plan on spending on cause marketing in the year to comes. As a gauge of cause marketing it’s a little determining the health of your car by measuring how much air pressure is in the back right tire. It’s inadequate and not very telling.  One of the fabulous yet sometimes frustrating aspects of cause marketing is its diversity.   Some campaigns focus on raising funds (buy this and we’ll give a dime), others concentrate...