Cause Marketing

Howard Brodwin, founder of SportsandSocialChange.org , and I are both sports fans and we both collectively lamented that in forfeiting his Tour de France victories Lance Armstrong effectively admitted to doping during his career. I wrote to Howard, “A lot of us like sports/athletics because even though we know the best athletes are still human, we admire them because of their super-human performances. When they dope, however, it kinda takes the air out of that idea. I'm disappointed and sad.” Howard, wisely, responded, this way: “I know what might cheer you up, and it starts next Wednesday. http://www.paralympic.org .” You kinda have to hunt down the TV coverage, but the Paralympics, which wraps up on Sept 9 in London, has been just splendid. And, as Howard points out, individual Paralympians have been a terrific source for cause marketing gold. Television spots from Coca-Cola, Citibank, and British Petroleum all feature inspiring Paralympians, and even Special Olympians....

Within the next few weeks you can count on seeing a lot of pink merchandise; garden shears, NFL Player’s shoes, cupcakes and more. But before you go pink golfer Phil Mickelson and his sponsors want you to think blue first. When you buy Mickelson’s blue cap for $29.95 from KPMG’s Phil Mickelson website, $7.50 will go to First Book, the children’s literacy charity, with a guaranteed donation of $50,000. The hat is the same one Mickelson is wearing on the PGA Tour this year. It features KPMG’s logo on the front and Calloway’s logo on the back, two of ‘Lefty’s’ major sponsors. The ad at the left was in Fortune magazine early this year and comes from the Alden Keene Cause Marketing Database. The $7.50 figure is in the fine print on the website . KPMG promotes the purchase of the hat as bringing First Book three books. To promote the campaign in the social media, when you Tweet a picture of the hat using the hashtag #PhilsBlueHat, you’re entered to win a VIP trip to Mickelson’s home ...

Causemarketing.biz, this humble little site you’re reading right now, is the Interweb’s largest, most diverse and comprehensive blog on cause marketing. Maybe the site's size and renown explains the volume of off-topic pitches I get from well-meaning PR people. There’s a name for these people. When they send me helpful pitches that are pertinent to causemarketing.biz I call them PR angels. When they pitch me ideas that are off-topic, too long, too dumb, or addressed to “Dear Alden,” I just call them clueless. Editors and reporters have started to out the clueless. Heck, even PR people are outing the clueless. It's never been more chic than right now to complain about PR idiots. I’m not going to out any clueless PR people by name. Not today anyway. But to prove my point, here is a short list of subject lines that have appeared in my in-box in the last week: “Text Messaging: a Marketers Paradise for Increasing Brand Engagement.” “Sales and Marketing Team: The Real Drivers ...

Imagine that you’ve got at least the bones of a new cause marketing campaign in place and it’s now time to test it and see how the market will react. What do you ‘sell’ in those first few meetings with prospective sponsors? There are two schools of thought. In the first school, you never go to any meeting unprepared. That is, you put together a pretty buttoned-down sponsorship packet that outlines exactly what you’re asking of the prospective sponsor and what they get in return. In this view, what you're really selling is you and your competence at the cause marketing game. In the other school, you prepare a bare-bones document that explains what you have in mind and why they’d want to participate, along with an educated guess of how much money you’re likely to ask for. Then, once you get in front of a decision-maker you ask what they’d want in return for their sponsorship dollars. Which is best? Well, it depends in part on you and what kind of person you are. If you can’t do anyth...

The image you choose to illustrate a cause marketing campaign matters. A lot. That’s because very few people in the United State from ages 25-45 really read anymore. But a cause marketing activation in print requires literacy. So the job of the illustration... along with the headline... is to draw people in for the explanation. The images are no less important in cause marketing activations online or on video. In general terms cause marketing activation refers to how you promote the campaign. Witness then the illustration in this effort from Massage Envy for their Healing Hands for Arthritis promotion coming up on Wednesday, Sept. 19, 2012. On that day, Massage Envy will give $10 from every massage and facial to the Arthritis Foundation. In addition, on Sept. 19 Murad will donate 10 percent of sales of its skincare products sold at Massage Envy locations. Massage Envy is a franchise with more than 700 locations in 43 states. Its business model is like that of a health club. Membershi...

A press account in Nonprofit Quarterly reports that a new academic study finds that when cause marketing campaigns give consumers the opportunity to determine which cause receives support that consumers are more likely to buy and have a more positive attitude toward the company than when no choice is offered The study, found in the current issue of the Journal of Marketing , was authored by Stefanie Rosen Robinson from North Carolina State University and Caglar Irmak and Frances Hipp of the University of South Carolina. I haven’t seen it yet, so I don’t know the methodology. But Rick Cohen writes on the Nonprofit Quarterly website that, “according to the study, three factors affect the content and potential success of consumer-driven cause-related marketing campaigns: collectivism, cause-brand fit, and goal proximity. The article abstract offers the following explanation:” “’Noncollectivists’ value choice because it allows them to choose their own individual preferences. However...

Back in the day, one of the things I put in proposals to potential sponsors was that cause marketing helped you stand out from competitors. Nowadays, in certain competitive industries like consumer packaged goods (CPG) one way to emerge from the clutter is to NOT do cause marketing. That is to say, cause marketing has become such a pervasive way of doing business that consumers expect it. So if you don't do cause marketing in competitive sectors like CPG, it becomes very noticeable, and not in a good way. So corporate marketers might rightly ask, as one did Tuesday night, “with so many of my competitors doing cause marketing, how can I make my brands emerge from the clutter?” Three quick thoughts: Do it right . There’s still much more bad cause marketing than good. Either it’s overly complicated, not very transparent, the match with the cause(s) is hard to fathom, the donation amount is wrong, the campaign is activated inadequately, the MacGuffin is missing, etc. The first t...