A Model Cause Marketing Tactic You Could Use in Your Campaign

Nine West, the women’s shoe maker and Modelinia.com, the website for all things model, want you to sponsor one of the models in the ad at the left to benefit Fashion Targets Breast Cancer (FTBC) as a part of the cause promotion called Runway Relief.

In their Nine West boots are FitBit wireless pedometers measuring the mileage the girls cover during Fashion Week. When the week is up, Nine West will donate $1 for each mile walked in the boots up to $75,000.

In addition Nine West is also selling the totes, the tank tops and, naturellement, the boots featured in the ad to benefit FTBC.

It took me a good 15 minutes to find the model sponsorship page and once I found it the interface seemed calculated to keep you from actually participating. You have follow one link to a gallery of the participating models. When you click on a favorite model you are then taken to a third-party site to donate. Once there you must type in the model’s first and last name and pay via PayPal. I hope everyone with a mind to donate is as diligent as I was.

But never mind all that. What Nine West has done here is pure cause marketing genius. The models know the pedometers are there, of course, so they’re more likely to wear the boots when they're off the runway during the all-important Fashion Week. Boots are normally rather anonymous, so these from Nine West have a metal tag that dangles from them that explains that they are part of Runway Relief. And, of course, there's that huge target symbol on them.

I think some variation on this would work great with local-market celebrities. Habitat for Humanity could attach a pedometer to the arm of a local pro sports player who is being sponsored for each swing of the hammer or swipe of the paint brush. Charities with walk or race events could put pedometers on the TV news anchors who race... or don't... and sell sponsorships. Same with morning zoo jocks from the local radio station. You could pit station against station in a contest to see who accumulates the most steps or miles.

I’d also add in some kind of element that let people who donated the most do some kind of meet and greet with the celebrity. And, I’d consider publishing the results for each local participating celebrity. It’s risky, but I think it would pay off.

Would the celebrities walk harder or longer knowing that their every step or every brush stroke generates a donation?

I’d bet on it.

Alignment and Affinity in Cause Marketing

It's been my pleasure to receive great advice from many people who asked nothing in return other than that I 'pay it forward.'

So if you're visiting the Valley of the Great Salt Lake or live here and would like to talk about cause-related marketing specifically, or marketing in general, then take me to lunch or dinner.

I'll give you my best advice and when we're done I'll simply push the tab over to your side of the table.

What if you’re not in Salt Lake City and/or don’t like to ski the Greatest Snow on Earth but still want to talk cause marketing? Then send me your questions on the back of $50 gift card from Ruth's Chris and I'll contemplate them over a nice ribeye steak.

Recently someone took me up on the first part of this offer and asked about affinity and alignment in cause marketing.

Here’s how the conversation played out:

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 certain 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. Etc.

And indeed, academic researchers have consistently demonstrated that a clear alignment between cause and sponsors yields the best results. But it’s more nuanced 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 successfully fought breast cancer, then it might make sense for her shop to support Susan G. Komen for the Cure, which is loaded with affinity.

In the real world you see a lot of successful cause marketing campaigns where the relationship between the cause and the sponsor isn’t exactly ‘strategic.’

For instance, Chili’s, the casual dining restaurant chain, does a very successful campaign each fall for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis.

In the traditional sense, there’s no strategic fit between Chili’s and St. Jude. But Chili’s does it because St. Jude offers so much affinity that customers and employees can easily understand and appreciate the relationship.

Plus, as I often say, children are the 'universal cause.'

“Is the CEO’s passion for a particular cause something you can build on,” my dinner companion asked? My response was that there’s no clear cut answer. If the CEO was passionate about… say… French opera that probably won’t carry over very well to a cause marketing campaign.

By the same token, there’s a small toy company in California called Munchkin Inc that did a successful campaign for Susan G. Komen because the wife of the company’s VP of marketing, a young mother of two, contracted breast cancer.

So CEO passion can be starting point.

Cause Marketing for Smaller Causes and Businesses

We see evidence of big cause marketing all the time.

You know, cause marketing so massive… like the Red campaign or Boxtops for Education… that it seems to create its own gravity.

Plainly, when properly designed, cause marketing scales up very well, thank you very much.

But what about the little guys? Does cause marketing scale down as well as up?

Here’s why this is an important question. In the United States small businesses… generally companies with 500 or fewer employees… represent 99 percent of all businesses that have employees, and over the last 15 years, small businesses have generated 64 percent of all new jobs.

Small business is also really dynamic. Small businesses rise and fail quickly in round after round of Schumpeter-style ‘creative destruction.’

Likewise, most 501(c)(3) nonprofit charities in the United States are small. There’s only one American Red Cross with its $4 billion budget, but at least 1 million smaller charities.

Is cause marketing only for the top one percent of causes and companies?

The simple answer is no.

Above is a flyer with a coupon from Coit cleaning in Louisville, Kentucky and benefiting Susan G. Komen for the Cure. Coit’s local operator in Louisville will match your $1 donation to Komen. Engage their service on a Tuesday and they’ll offer you $10 bounceback coupon.

In my market the local public transit operator, called UTA, in August 2011 launched two new light rail lines that included a cause marketing element for the Utah Food Bank, the state’s largest. Bring a can of food for the Food Bank and you could ride for free on the day on August 3, four days before regular operations commenced.

UTA isn’t tiny and neither is Komen. But Coit and the Utah Food Bank are small. These campaigns evidence that cause marketing isn’t just for the gigantic cause or company.

Hats off to Kate B. for the ad from Louisville.

Weaving Cause Marketing into Your Business Model

There’s probably five or so businesses that cubicle drones (and others) tend to dream of starting: a winery; a restaurant; a specialty retail store; a food business based on an old family recipe; or a toy business.

But look at something like the Inc 5000 and you’ll see tons of companies that perform some B2B function and relatively few that face the consumer, all those dreams notwithstanding.

But two brothers Chris and Will Haughey actually started a consumer-facing toy company whose success is due, in part, to the way they strategically wove cause marketing into their business model.

The company is Tegu, an eponym for Tegucigalpa, the capital city of of the Central American country Honduras where the toys are manufactured. Tegu makes wooden blocks of sustainably harvested hardwood that are stuffed with magnets. The result is a toy that’s more interesting to kids than just blocks, and the very opposite of something mind-dumbing, like Angry Birds.

Here’s the cause marketing part. When you buy a set of blocks, Tegu allows you to choose between two causes to support. You can choose:

• To have 12 trees planted in Honduras (and elsewhere).
• Or, help educate a caste of Honduran kids that would otherwise do scavenging work in the Tegucigalpa city dump.

The counter at Tegu.com says 18,011 trees have been planted and 1,798 days of school have been donated.

Tegu sets aren’t cheap. But they’re made of mahogany and other hardwoods. My guess is they’d last for 50 years even if they were used in a day care setting, so you're buying a legacy toy that can span the generations.

No less lasting, I think, is the way the Haughey brothers have built their cause marketing approach.

About once a month some new study or report comes out to say that cause marketing is dead. I’ll soon be reviewing in this space a recent study from the big ad agency J. Walter Thompson that says almost exactly that.

But that’s just the headline. Inevitably what the reports typically say is that the kind of brain-dead bolt-on cause marketing that we see so often is dead. Really well-thought-out and well-executed cause marketing… like this effort from Tegu… remains the wave of the future.

Bringing a Reporter to a Pine Beetle Battle (With Apologies to Dr. Suess)

You’ve probably heard the old joke whose punch line talks about “bringing a knife to a gunfight.” The joke is about feckless approaches in hazardous situations.

In the fight to save forests from the ravages of the pine beetle, which has affected at least 2 million acres of conifer forests in the Western United States, the U.S. Forest Service has made a reporter their partner.

Perhaps you’ve seen news reports about the pine beetle epidemic. Here’s a recent one from my local newspaper if you haven’t read about it anywhere else.

It’s a story that hits close to home for me and my family. Many of my in-laws spent their formative years in and around Cedar Mountain in Southern Utah, where the devastation to the conifer forests due to pine beetles is widespread. When my father-in-law surveys the devastation to his boyhood playground, he’s heartbroken.

The U.S. Forest Service ran the ad above in the October issue of Outside magazine. It’s a slightly cheeky ad with a clear call to action: stop hugging trees and start planting them.

That’s something I can personally get behind so I visited chooseoutdoors.org to find out what I can do. What I found was a self described “portal for all things outdoor” and a “news source for recreation information and advocacy.”

OK. But where do I sign up to plant trees in places like Cedar Mountain?

There’s not a search feature at chooseoutdoors.org and no specific tab for tree plant initiatives. But there is a tab labeled ‘Initiatives.’ That tab has two listings: “Recommendations for Our President,” and “Testimony on Economic Stimulus’ from the Founder and Senior Advisor to Chooseoutdoors.org, Bruce Ward. So I tried the ‘Get Involved’ tab.

Here’s all the listings under that tab, not including the obligatory ‘make a donation’ ask.

"Help Choose Outdoors sustain the outdoor experience for all Americans.

• Encourage your legislators to provide resources to preserve America's public lands and maintain outdoor recreation infrastructure.
• Search for your elected officials.
• Participate with an organization in your area that is involved in public lands stewardship or advocacy.

Introduce someone to outdoor activities."

Chooseoutdoors.org features an interesting and nuanced documentary about the pine beetle epidemic, accounts about consensus being reached at REI store meetings, policy papers, and news accounts. But nothing, that I could find, about planting new trees in forests affected by the pine beetle.

With its emphasis on education, consensus-building and partnerships Chooseoutdoors.org may have the best approach for the pine beetle devastation. I don’t know. But I do know that this ad is selling something that Chooseoutdoors.org isn’t delivering.

Let's Bring Open Standards to the Practice Cause Marketing

If cause marketing is to really grow, I'm increasingly coming to the opinion that cause marketing needs the equivalent of an ‘open standard.’ When speaking of software especially, the term ‘open standards’ means an agreed-upon convention that is free and unconstrained in how it can be used.

Open standards are enormously valuable to you and me. HTML and XHTML are open standards. PDF is an open standard and your computer’s USB ports will accept anything with a USB plug because of open standards.

That you’re reading this post is because of an open standard called TCP-IP, which is the way website data is divided up into packets, transmitted, and then reassembled by servers somewhere near your computer or phone.

According to Wikipedia: Open Standards means “a published specification that is immune to vendor capture at all stages in its life-cycle.” Its more complete definition according to the Digital Standards Organization is:

“The standard is adopted and will be maintained by a not-for-profit organization, and its ongoing development occurs on the basis of an open decision-making procedure available to all interested parties.

The standard has been published and the standard specification document is available freely. It must be permissible to all to copy, distribute, and use it freely.

The patents possibly present on (parts of) the standard are made irrevocably available on a royalty-free basis.

There are no constraints on the re-use of the standard.

A key defining property is that an open standard is immune to vendor capture at all stages in its life-cycle.

Immunity from vendor capture makes it possible to improve upon, trust, and extend an open standard over time.”

What would be the benefits of open standards cause marketing?

1. It would create a series of cause marketing conventions that anyone could adopt, change and modify.
2. Because it would be free, it would eliminate some of the transaction costs of cause marketing.
3. It would make it easy for any sponsor to quickly plan and begin a cause marketing campaign.
4. It would give charities an easy starting point when approaching prospective sponsors.

What elements might be part of any cause marketing open standards?

1. Sponsorship contracts.
2. A seal of approval of some kind.
3. General cause marketing approaches.
4. Standard donation amounts or percentages.

What else?

Honestly, my thinking on the subject is a work in progress. I’m not sure I know enough about the all the ins and outs of open standards to give a more complete answer right now.

But I am convinced that just as all the big hotel chains in the U.S. profited when they worked together to create open standards for their reservation systems more than a decade ago, the development of open standards for cause marketing would benefit all stakeholders involved in cause marketing, including the 'donors,' charities, sponsors and consultants like me.

The Importance of the Match in Cause Marketing

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 estimated $4.2 billion, makes an implied endorsement for Bulova Accutron (a company he doesn’t apparently own) and is donating his appearance fee to Virgin Unite, Virgin’s nonprofit foundation.

Is there anyone within the reach the Internet’s electrons that believes that Sir Richard Branson has strapped on a $500 Bulova watch at any time in the last 30 years except during the photo shoot for this ad? A billionaire or other powerful person might choose to wear a $40 Timex Ironman watch. Former U.S. President Bill Clinton famously did. But a $500 watch? It's doubtful.

Simply put, while Sir Richard might have the psychic energy to pick out a Swiss Made Roger DuBois Excalibur for a cool $550,000, it’s hard to imagine him spending any amount of time picking out a suitable Bulova, even if it’s also Swiss made.

But let’s bring this home a little more.

Bulova’s ad here might be called ‘glancing blow’ cause marketing. Branson donates his fee to a cause that bears his company’s name.

Beyond what I've just said, do you care to figure out the ever-so-slight link between Bulova and Virgin Unite? Does that link influence your decision in any way to buy a Bulova or not?

Racy Cause Marketing

On Sunday, Sept 18, 2011 the Goodyear tires on cars racing at the NASCAR Geico 400 and O'Reilly Auto Parts NHRA National Top Fuel and Funny Car races featured a show of support for the troops and will benefit the nonprofit charity called Support Our Troops.

The tires, which sported a custom Support Our Troops graphic on the sidewalls, have now been pulled from the cars and will be autographed by their respective drivers and auctioned off online to support the cause.

This is the second year that Goodyear has conducted this campaign.

But for 2011 the company has added some new elements. Goodyear’s website asks you to donate directly via the site or by text-to-donate. The text-to-donate option generates a $10 donation by adding that amount to your mobile phone bill. Goodyear also invites customers to donate all or part of their rebate when they purchase tires during Goodyear's 'Traction in Action Tire Sale.’

Lastly, Goodyear has also developed an event that shows promise, even if it looks under-developed right now to me. Called the Goodyear Bootcamp Challenge, the contest pits drivers from NASCAR vs. drivers from the NHRA in a physical contest that uses Goodyear racing tires. Goodyear is the official tire provider from both NASCAR and the NHRA.

I say it shows promise because much depends on how well the event is executed. It appears that the Bootcamp Challenge has already taken place, although the website and the promotional video are vague on that point. But the website does describe six stations in the Challenge: Spin and Run; Tire Slalom, Sergeant Slide; Leapfrog; Find the Key; and, Water Balloon Toss.

Based only on those names it sounds like a snoozefest. Too often the thinking that frames fundraising events is based on what could be easily/quickly put together, rather then what 'customers'...whatever that means to you... would want to see or participate in.

Here’s what I suggest to augment the Challenge for 2012.

NASCAR does a lot of direct-to-fan outreach, making their athletes much more accessible than NFL, NBA or MLB players. It’s a great point of differentiation. As a starting point, Goodyear ought to auction off the right to participate in next year’s Challenge with a favored driver to the highest bidders.

Secondly, they need to rethink the tire course stations. I mean water balloons! Really?

People pay good money to watch NASCAR and NHRA drivers drive. But how much of what NASCAR driver Joey Lugano (seen in the ad at left) or NHRA driver Tony Shumacher is all-purpose skill and how much is vehicle specific skill?

So imagine them driving something besides their usual vehicles; golf carts, lawn mowers, Cushmans, race prepared electric kiddie cars, horse and buggies, bikes, swamp buggies, snowmobiles, etc. It would be like a decathlon where athletes are rewarded not for being the 'world’s fastest human'…in the Olympics that title belongs to super-sprinter Usain Bolt. Instead, champion decathletes are considered “The World’s Greatest Athletes.”

In a like manner Goodyear could crown “The World’s Greatest Driver!” in benefit of Support Our Troops.

That I would watch.

Cause Marketing for the Hirsute

Cancer is a hairy beast that needs to be capped. And to help, Boston ad agency Small Army has put together a fun campaign that has potential lessons for nonprofit fundraisers.

Called ‘Be Bold, Be Bald!’ here’s how it works. Order a $20 fundraising kit online ($25 after October 1, 2011) and Small Army will send you a bald cap and, a t-shirt to wear on Be Bold, Be Bald! Day October 21, 2011, along with a wealth of fundraising resources. Money raised goes to your choice of more than 20 cancer fighting organizations.

Small Army wants you to seek out sponsors, like in one of those race events that nonprofits are so good at producing. But there’s no training involved so the only the only sweating will take place under the bald cap on October 21.

(Not being hirsute myself I'm quite sure that wearing a bald cap all day for me would indeed be a sweaty affair!)

Small Army has promoted the event widely and well. The ad above was in Time magazine. They’ve also put together a very complete fundraising approach that doesn’t miss many tricks. Sign up, pay your fee, and you’ll get:

• The kit with the t-shirt and bald cap
• A customized fundraising page
• Facebook messaging, including formatted templates
• Twitter messaging
• Banner ads for your website
• Sample emails
• A ‘Cheat Sheet for Spreading the Word,’ forms, and other downloadable items

Basically Small Army has created a inexpensive version of the race and peer-to-peer fundraising SAS offerings from Convio, Blackbaud, and others.

Small Army’s motivation stems from sad personal experience. One of the agency’s founders and the former creative director, Mike Connell, died of cancer in 2007.

So complete is Small Army’s approach that I wish they’d consider offering it for a nominal fee to small charities as a ‘white label’ event fundraising service. The big charities can afford really full-featured (some say bloated) offerings from Blackbaud and Convio. But those services can be out-of-reach for smaller charities.

Now obviously Small Army isn’t going to sell Be Bold, Be Bald! But it would be a great service to the small nonprofit sector if they sold the back office portion of the campaign.

IGA Stores Using Private Label Food Brands To Benefit Wounded Warriors Project

Now through November 11, 2011 participating IGA stores across the United States are offering $0.05 to the Wounded Warrior Project for each case of certain private label food brands sold.

This is an echo of a similar effort from participating IGA stores undertook for the Wounded Warrior Project from Memorial Day last May through Labor Day earlier this month. Only instead of private label foods it was for cases of IGA private label water and the donation amount was $0.10 per case.

In turn, that seemed influenced by a campaign Kroger did for breast cancer research in October 2010.

IGA is a huge buying and distribution cooperative for 5,000 member stores in 40 countries. The Wounded Warrior Project is a nonprofit charity that raises money and awareness for the nation’s injured service members. I became aware of this effort via a news announcement from the IGA in tiny Wendell, North Carolina, east of Raleigh.

I’ve been agitating for private label cause marketing in these pages since November 2008.

Here’s why: in recessions private label brands do very well. But once the hard times are over, consumers return to the name brands.

But if a cause marketing effort could help an outfit like IGA preserve even 5 percent of the customers that switched during the recession, it could potential be worth tens of millions to the bottom line every year.

In the declining economy, people in the UK, the US and elsewhere are buying more private label brands.

Of course they are, you say. What could make more sense than to get the same-quality or nearly the same quality for a meaningful savings?

When the economy dips, sales of cheaper house brands and generics take off. And when the economy recovers consumers tend to go back to the major brands.

For the foreseeable future, price is going to be major driver for the consumer.

Imagine this scenario: a shopper faces two cans of cream of mushroom soup, the store brand and the dominant brand in the US, Campbell's. The store brand has respectable quality and is cheaper per ounce.

In a face off like that, Campbell’s market share would erode very seriously sans their incredible market shelf space and decades-old Labels for Education program, in my view.

Now if the private label brand started a well thought-of cause marketing campaign of its own, all bets are off.

Is IGA’s effort enough to do all that?

Well nationwide veteran’s causes poll out very well. And North Carolina is home to 8 major military bases, including the monstrous U.S. Army post Fort Bragg, home of the 82nd Airborne, and Camp Lejeune, a major training base for the U.S. Marine Corps. By contrast, my lightly populated home state hosts just two major military installations.

But my take is that if private label brands really want to engender long-term customer loyalty, they’re going to need something that is permanently embedded into the products, just like General Mills' Boxtops for Education is.

And it goes without saying, I think, that the donation amount has to be more than a nickel for a case of canned goods. A nickel or even a dime per case is just not a serious amount.

Epic Cause Marketing In Six Words

In 2009 I wrote a post I called Cause Marketing in Six Words.

It was inspired by Rachel Ferschleiser and Larry Smith's book "Not Quite What I was Planning: Six-Word Memoirs by Writers Famous and Obscure."

It begins with a story about Ernest Hemingway who was once challenged to write a book in six words. He responded with: “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.”

That's punchier and more pathos-filled than anything I've ever read on Twitter, my own account included. (My Twitter handle is @paulrjones).

Ferschleiser and Smith published many more of these evocative and diminutive tales following a contest on Twitter.

Here’s a select few:

“Danced in fields of infinite possibilities.”
Deepak Chopra

“Brought it to a boil, often.”
Mario Batali

And, two personal favorites…

“Found true love after nine months.”
Jody Smith

“Wasn’t born a redhead; fixed that.”
Andie Grace

Here’s my challenge to you cause marketers: develop a description of your campaign that comprises six words [or less!]. You’ll find the discipline imposed by just six words will bring not only brevity, but clarity.

I’m not talking about writing a headline here. Headlines are meant to tease you into the text that follows. Six-word stories tell complete truth.

Back in 2009 regular reader Debbie Kellogg Director of Corporate Relations & Alliances at The Partnership for a Drug-Free America, submitted this gem:

"You talk. Teens listen. Drug-free families."

Here’s my slightly bawdy version version for Boxtops for Education:

"Clipped Boxtops. Now School Has Balls."

What about you? Do you have a six-word story that describes your cause marketing efforts or a favorite one?

To inspire you a little I've got an offer you can't refuse. The best submission gets a signed (by me :0) copy of "Cause Marketing for Dummies" by my friends Joe Waters and Joanna MacDonald.

Comment below or email me at aldenkeene @ gmail . com.

Cause Marketing in a B2B Setting

Most cause marketing is aimed at consumers, but not all. B2B cause marketing takes place regularly, if not commonly. Here’s an intriguing B2B cause marketing offer from Zoomerang, the online survey company, benefiting schools or other organizations through JustGive.org.

Here’s how works: When you buy $2,500 worth of Zoomerang services between Sept 13 and Sept 30, 2011, the company will send you via email a $100 GiveNow card from Justgive.org. While Zoomerang is promoting this as a chance to give school supplies in time for back-to-school, the JustGive.org certificate could go to any of hundreds of thousands of organizations in the JustGive orbit.

I was prepared to really like this campaign until I read the fine print.

First off, the campaign time period is oddly short. It lasts 17 days.

Apparently whoever developed this campaign is a Virgo.

The offer is available only to people that Zoomerang or its affiliates approach. I saw this because I’m a Zoomerang customer. But you can’t take advantage of it unless you are on their mailing list, too.

Zoomerang also choose to limit to 100 the number of certificates it would buy. So if 7,000 people feel compelled by the offer to purchase $2500 in surveys on or before Sept. 30, 2011, only the first 100 will get GiveNow Cards.

Ross Perot famously left IBM back in the day to found Electronic Data Systems in part because Big Blue capped the commissions it would pay top sales performers like him, and that seemed irrational. Capping the donations seems irrational to me, too, especially given the 17-day time frame.

Which brings me to my final criticism. Why didn’t Zoomerang just decide to really make this a school promotion and call it a day? Why split the baby and allow companies to give the GiveNow card to any cause? And if they were going to make it a school donation promotion, why not just partner with DonorsChoose.org and be done with it? The JustGive donation system, as Zoomerang lays it out in its terms and conditions, is almost painfully awkward and DonorsChoose offers gift cards as well.

Too bad. I really wanted to like this B2B cause marketing campaign.

Back Door the National by Cause Marketing With the Affiliate

OK, you didn’t hear this from me. But if you want to get the boost that comes from partnering with a prominent national charity, but don’t want to jump through the hoops or pay their fat minimum fees, one work-around is to strike a deal with one of the national’s affiliates.

Affiliates are not only smaller (read, easier to navigate) than the mother ship, they may be hungrier too, because they have fundraising targets that national foists on them every year. Best of all the local affiliate still carries the same name as the national.

Let me be clear, this is NOT what Maytag is doing in this Facebook campaign. In fact, Maytag, a division of Whirlpool, pays the Boys and Girls Clubs of America… the national organization… $1.5 million a year through its Dependability Awards effort.

Maytag’s campaign asks you to nominate a person in your life who personifies dependability, the company’s long-time unique selling proposition. Meanwhile on the Facebook nomination page, Maytag highlights volunteers at local Boys and Girls Clubs who have distinguished themselves by their dependability. I like it. It’s a nice effort.

But you could back door the national by seeking a direct relationship with the local affiliate and taking a creative approach like Maytag’s.

Of course, whether or not you can pull this off depends on the nature of the affiliate’s contractual agreement with the national organization. But in the case of Boys and Girls Club, most clubs are separate 501(c)(3) charities. The Boys and Girls Clubs of America is, in large measure, a sanctioning authority.

But your mileage may vary with other respected nonprofits like Susan G. Komen for the Cure, the American Heart Association, the American Diabetes Association, etc. The other risk you run is that the local affiliate may not be much help. If the national organization seems lean, wait ‘till you meet with the local affiliate.

And, if you’re going to take this approach you’ll probably need strip out any real demands on the local affiliate’s resources or capacity.

Atway anyway ateray, ouyay idn'tday earhay isthay omfray emay!

Can Suze Orman Afford to Do Cause Marketing?

Right now best-selling author and financial advice doyenne Suze Orman is appearing in ads on behalf of the QVC Channel’s annual Fashion Footwear Association of New York (FFANY) shoe event, which benefits cancer research.

Now in its 18th year, the FFANY event takes place Thursday, October 13, 2011 at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York City. FFANY’s website reports that the event has sold more than a million pairs of shoes and generated more than $35 million for a variety of cancer charities.

The Alden Keene Cause Marketing Database has images of past spokespeople including Fergie, Jessica Simpson and Reba McEntire. The ads appear in women’s magazines including Cosmo, Elle, O, the Oprah Magazine, TV Guide, and elsewhere. I spotted this one in Redbook.

Usually the creative in the ads touches on the personal connection the celebrity has to cancer. But for Suze Orman the creative is an explicit seal of approval. The headline reads, “You’re Approved,” which is plainly a riff on the segment on the Suze Orman Show called, ‘Can I Afford It?’ The Suze Orman Show airs on CNBC.

On it people with plans to buy something that seems outwardly extravagant… a fancy dog, expensive landscaping, an exotic vacation, and the like… ask Orman if they can afford it. Orman, whose standard financial advice through her numerous books is to pay down debt and save eight-month’s worth of expenses before doing anything else, reviews the caller’s financial state on-air and then usually tells the caller that no, they can’t afford it.

So it seems surprising that the budget-minded Orman is endorsing a transactional cause marketing campaign. Now, to be fair, the shoes QVC features on the FFANY shoe sale are all said to be priced at 50% or more below retail.

But the Orman brand is about financial restraint, not saving money on purchases. And the headline, while cleverly addressing the inherent 'Cause-nitive Dissonance,' doesn’t change that.

9-11 and Kaizen

Yesterday was the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. Like most other Americans, I remember exactly what I was doing when I heard the news; I was having breakfast at Denny’s delivering a cause marketing proposal to a local official of the US Golf Association (USGA).

I have many friends/family in New York and Washington D.C. both who were personally affected by the attacks.

After a paroxysm of watching 9/11 memorials and television specials this last week or so, and reading about the attacks from every possible viewpoint, I've concluded that Americans are still struggling to understand what it all means. Was it just a terrorist attack? A wake-up call? A finger of indictment pointing back at America?

My wife and I have children who were unborn when the attacks took place. And so it falls to us to explain to them what it means us in ways they can fathom. Frankly, we’ve struggled with that.

There are bad people in this world who mean to do harm to other people. That part of the story is easy enough tell. But that chapter doesn’t have much of a moral. And memorial services and commemorations alone don’t settle it either or offer more profound life lessons.

Instead, here’s where my wife and I are coming to, I think.

We live in parlous times. Bad people do bad things to good and bad people alike. And like Irishman Edmund Burke famously said, “all it takes for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing.” We can and should grieve for those who died, celebrate their lives, keep fresh the memories, and venerate the many who acted so heroically on that day. All are right and proper responses.

But good people must do more.

Tragic moments like the attacks of 9/11, and important anniversaries like yesterday represent inflection points. They remind us that life is short. Times like these are a chance for those of us who remain to look ourselves in the mirror and ask, ‘am I the person I should be?’ And if the reflection in the mirror answers no, then we must make every effort burnish the “better angels of our nature,” as American President Abraham Lincoln so eloquently put it.

Kaizen, the Japanese word often used to describe continuous process improvement, isn’t just for business. My dictionary says the word means ‘change for the better.’

My family and I are people of faith. We believe that God would have us love our neighbors as ourselves and that our neighbor is everyone else who draws breath. Like the Sunday School song goes, "all are precious in His sight." But you don’t have to believe in the Decalogue or Jesus or Sunday School songs to draw the same moral conclusions.

What’s the proper way to remember man-made disasters like 9/11 or natural disasters like the earthquakes in Turkey, China, or Japan, or the hurricane in Haiti, or the tsunami in Asia, all of which have taken place since 9/11? By embracing the idea of kaizen. By continuously improving yourself and working to improve our world, too.

One place to start right now is with famine relief in East Africa, where hundreds of thousands of precious lives are currently threatened.

What Dumb PR Pitches Can Teach Smart Cause Marketers

Yesterday in conversation with a new friend in India I learned that I am ‘quite famous’ in India. India is the worlds’ second most populous country, as well as the most populous democracy so it’s a very good place to be famous in. Maybe my new-found renown explains the volume of pitches I get from people who want coverage in this blog (few of which are from India, I hasten to add).

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, over-long, just plain dumb, or addressed to “Dear Alden,” I just call them idiots. (I think it’s clear from a cursory reading of the blog that my name is Paul Jones and that my company’s name is Alden Keene.) And I’m not talking about spam here either. Everybody on earth with an email account… and increasingly a mobile phone… gets spam.

Editors and reporters have started to out the idiots. Heck, even PR people are outing the idiots. It's very chic to complain about PR idiots right now, and who am I to resist a trend?

I’m not going to out any idiot PR people by name. Although I reserve all rights to do so in the future. But to prove my point, here is a short list of subject lines that have appeared in my in-box at one point:

• “Has Global Oil Reached its Tipping Point?” from a publicist at a major US newspaper.
• “21 Days to Creating Your Dream Life,” from a book publicist.
• “Shepard Fairey Auctions Exclusive HOPE Painting,” from a publicist for a painter.

And a personal favorite:

• “BOARDFEST SNOWBOARD RAIL JAM GOES COED FOR BLIZZARD AT THE BEACH,” from an event producer. And yes, it came just like that in all-caps. There was a day when headlines in press releases had all caps. But that day has long passed for all mailed press releases.
  

There are lessons in all this for cause marketers, especially for those on the nonprofit side of the ledger.

1. Don’t Just Throw Your Cause Marketing Proposals Over the Transom. Don’t spam prospects with your proposal. They have to be addressed to someone. And that person has to have agreed in advance to receive your proposal.
2. Think Hard About the Relationship You’re Proposing. If you’re a small pet rescue charity in Deer Run, Pennsylvania you’re almost certainly barking up the wrong tree to propose a CRM campaign to ExxonMobil. That’s not to say that all successful cause marketing relationships are purely strategic. But very few of them are out and out dumb.
3. The Format of the Proposal Counts. In general no type should be smaller than about 20 points. Don’t use wacky fonts or weirdly-colored type. And you got keep your deck to 15-20 pages/slides or less. Only Tom Peters can get away with more than that. If it’s on paper; use the landscape format. Use pictures, and plenty of them, but make sure they’re dynamite and illustrate your cause and the campaign well.
4. Don’t Do Anything Rash If the Answer is No. Unless you’re Susan G Komen, or St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital if you get a form letter back telling you thanks, but no thanks, think very hard before you fire back something venomous. Cause marketing is a race. And as we know “the race is not always to the swift, but to those who keep running.”

4 Cause Marketing Campaigns, 3 Causes, 1 Day

On Wednesdays in my market all the major grocers insert their flyer in the local newspaper. Yesterday all of them save WalMart had a cause marketing element in their respective flyers.

Here’s a review of each:

Smith’s is owned by grocery giant Kroger, WalMart’s largest domestic grocery competitor. Their campaign benefits the USO, the charity that aids members of the military and their families and now celebrating its 70th anniversary.

The USO reusable bag is an extension of a campaign for the USO Kroger announced in July, 2011. Participating stores have coin donation canisters at check stands and/or ask customers to round up their purchases to the nearest dollar to benefit the USO. The full campaign lasts one year with a goal of raising $1 million. A limited promotion with Procter & Gamble has already generated $250,000.

In addition, the #47 Kroger NASCAR features USO branding this season and Kroger locations with medical clinics called ‘The Little Clinic’ donated $1 for each sports physical during July and August. You can also donate directly to the USO at a special microsite.

I haven’t seen this promotion in-store yet, but based on what I’ve read I don’t understand the connection between a reusable bag and the USO. I like Kroger’s pledge of support to the USO, whose services I used when I was in the National Guard. They do important work. The USO is new to cause marketing, it’s 70-year history notwithstanding. So the onus for picking a non-sequitur premium item to sell is on Kroger.

The Stand to Cure MS is a campaign in Utah and Southern Idaho from the local chapter of the Multiple Sclerosis Society. The idea was inspired 2008 by a six-year-old named Thomas whose mom was diagnosed with MS. Young Thomas started a lemonade stand to help the fight against the scourge disease and raised $1,000 that first year.

The local MS chapter built on the idea beginning in 2009 and enlisted the support of Harmons (see above), a local grocery chain. Other grocers affiliated with Associated Foods, the local grocery co-op, including Maceys, joined in 2010. Last year the Stand to Cure MS generated $10,000 at 60 locations across Utah.

Variations of this fundraiser have been around forever. Back in the day at Children’s Miracle Network we did root beer floats with modest success. Like many such fundraisers much depends on who is staffing the booth. Inside a grocery store lemonade is more often sold rather than bought. (Especially since the lemonade at the MS stand is Country Time. Blech!).

But if you’ve got people full of personality actively drumming up business, this could work just fine.

The fourth effort is from another local grocery chain called Fresh Market and their effort is an old-style vendor program with Kraft and its Huddle to Fight Hunger effort benefiting the anti-hunger charity Feeding America.

Kraft started Huddle to Fight Hunger in 2010 and it’s got a lot of moving parts including FSIs, in-cinema advertising, celebrities like Joe Montana and sponsorship of the Kraft Fight Hunger Bowl.

Long-time readers know I’ve got a lot of love for these big involved campaigns. However, I’ve got less love for the way Kraft explains its participation with Feeding America on its Facebook page:

“Kraft will donate up to 4,000,000 meals via online and mobile activities, as part of our goal of providing 25 million meals. The monetary equivalent of meals will be donated. $0.14 equals one meal secured by Feeding America on behalf of local food banks.”

What they’re saying, I think, is that Feeding America and its member food banks are able to provide full meals for relatively little money because of their efficiency in operations and because of the amount of donated food they receive. Donating to Feeding America, therefore, offers a kind of multiplier effect. Kraft has a goal of providing 25 million meals. At $0.14 per meal that equates to a $3.5 million donation.

Lady Gaga Raises $202 Million for MAC AIDS Fund, Forbes Reports

~Let's Put Her to Work Paying Down the Deficit!~

Currently on newsstands is Forbes magazine’s '100 Most Powerful Women' issue and there at number 11 is Lady Gaga, whose blurb tells us that she is 25, that she ‘banked $90 million last year’ and ‘raised $202 million to fight HIV/AIDS through MAC’s VIVA GLAM Lipstick and Lipgloss sales.”

Holy Simoleans, Batman. $202 million?!!! That makes Lady Gaga the most effective single cause marketer ever given that she’s only been in the public eye for about three years. How did I miss this amazing cause marketing story?

In fact, the truth is a little ‘more nuanced,’ as the politicians like to say, even if Gaga may really turn out to be among the greatest cause marketers ever.

John Demsey, group president of The Estee Lauder Companies, which has owned MAC since 1997 and who chairs the MAC AIDS campaign, introduced some reality in an interview with the Wall Street Journal recorded February 18, 2011.

The MAC AIDS Fund raises money for people with HIV/AIDS through the sale of MAC Glam Lipsticks and Lipglosses. 100 percent of the purchase price of MAC GLAM lipsticks/glosses goes to the AIDS Fund. I have always admired the utter simplicity and enormous appeal of MAC’s approach.

In the first 16 years of the MAC AIDS Fund, GLAM products have generated a little more than $200 million in donations. In 2010 Gaga and Cyndi Lauper, the co-spokeswomen for the current campaign, generated $34 million for the MAC AIDS Fund, about what MAC raised in its first 10 years of the GLAM campaign.

Gaga’s goal, and one presumes Lauper’s, is to bring the total up to $250 million by 2012. That would mean MAC Glam would have to do about $50 million in 2011 alone. No word from MAC on where they stand on that goal with just a little less than 4 months left in the year.

But if Gaga and Lauper make it, that makes their partnership with MAC worth some $84 million.

That’s not the $202 million in the Forbes piece, but it’s a stunning number nonetheless for a 2-year effort.

And quite a feather in Gaga’s headdress.

The People Who Communicate Corporate Social Responsibility Can't Make a Business Case For It

Been going through my voluminous electronic files of studies about cause marketing and corporate social responsibility (CSR) and I came across again a 2008 poll of corporate communicators that found they want their companies to engage in more CSR; they just can’t come up with a good business reason for doing so or decide who should drive it.

The poll, from Ragan Communications and Pollstream follows a 2008 study from IBM (covered in this space), that reported that corporate executives want to see more CSR, too, and were devoting resources to it.

The poll was part of a series from Ragan that regularly queries some 425+ corporate communicators in North and South America, Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia.

The communicators split almost evenly over the issue of who should run a company’s CSR efforts. Just about 50 percent said it should be a standalone department that reports directly to the CEO. The other 50 percent said CSR should fall under either media relations, internal communications or marketing.

It would be a measure of the esteem that CSR holds in a company if it operated independently and reported directly to the CEO. But I wouldn’t hold my breath that that will happen soon or (if it does) last long.

[Remember: when the discipline of marketing first emerged in the 1950s and 1960s that function reported to the CEO. Nowadays marketing is more likely to fall under operations and therefore the president or COO.]

If I was running a corporate CSR operation and my choice was to work under media relations, internal communications or marketing, I’d hold my nose and pick marketing. Corporate communications and PR staffs are like the athletes that finish sixth at the Olympic trials: nobody cares but their mothers.

Not that marketing is a perfect fit. Hardly. But corporate marketing operations have an actual budget, in sharp contrast with the alternatives.

It’s interesting to compare the why of CSR between the corporate communicators and their bosses. The Ragan poll turned up four reasons why the communicators would increase CSR:

1. 50 percent said it would enhance PR and corporate image.
   
2. 40 percent said it would improve employee engagement.
   
3. 7 percent expect it would grow sales.
   
4. 4 percent say it would attract new employees.

By contrast, the CEOs in the IBM study see CSR has a business opportunity, not a chance to issue a press release. As an electronics CEO was quoted in the IBM study of CEOs, “Corporate identity and CSR will play an important role in differentiating a company in the future… This will make a big difference in new markets such as Russia and other Eastern European markets.”

Now we know why a CEO is more likely to get her start in the company’s mailroom than in its corporate communications office; too few communicators think like business people!

Farewell, Jerry Lewis

There’s an old story… perhaps even true… told about Winston Churchill at a party. Another guest reproves him saying, “Winston, you are drunk.” He responds, the story goes, by saying, “yes madam, and you are ugly. But tomorrow I will be sober and you will still be ugly.”

We laugh at that line because it evidences Churchill’s famous wit and self-composure. But, let’s be honest, that remark has barbs. It stings! Churchill was a great man, but he wasn’t always a nice man.

The same, I think, can be said of Jerry Lewis, the man who last night on 4 September 2011 was denied any chance to appear on the MDA Telethon that he helped start and make famous. Apparently Jerry was scheduled to appear in a taped segment singing his signature song 'You'll Never Walk Alone.' But even that was stymied at the last minute, reports say.

I’ve been hard on Lewis in these pages. As a marketer I always thought he was always too closely enmeshed with the branding of the Muscular Dystrophy Association… ‘Jerry’s Kids,’ and the ‘Jerry Lewis MDA Telethon’ to cite just two… for the MDA’s own good. Certainly, once Jerry and the MDA started down that road 44 years ago, this ignominious 'retirement' was always one of the possible endings.

Moreover, Lewis has made a regular habit of putting his foot in his mouth and ticking people off in inventive ways, sometimes even on air. No matter what he has said, he almost never apologizes. Why would he? The fact that Jerry had grip on the MDA Telethon through last year, when he was 84, tells you something about power of the man.

But do not doubt for a moment that just because he is not always nice man that he isn’t a great man. Lewis, for instance, taught both Steven Spielberg and George Lucas at the USC film school. In the 1960s he basically invented ‘video assist,’ the system whereby a film director can review the video version of a take immediately after it is shot.

On the charitable side, Lewis first hosted the MDA Telethon in 1952. The MDA Telethon became an annual event in 1966 and Lewis hosted it until 2010. For many of those years Lewis was on-air basically around the clock for more than 20 hours straight.

But the stamina it took to do that doesn’t compare to the perseverance and will Jerry Lewis showed in getting and keeping the MDA Telethon on the air for those 44 years. I don’t know Lewis and I haven’t read anything about how he did it. But I was intimately involved with the production of the Children’s Miracle Network Telethon. So I can promise you that telethons don’t just happen.

Entropy is the rule in television. There are so many forces tearing at commercial television shows, for instance, that rare is the program that lasts even one full season. Fewer still make it long enough to get to syndication after five years. Television in the United States isn’t a public service, it’s a business and a ruthless one at that. And one of the first rules of that business in the United States is “don’t give up your airtime for free.”

What Lewis did was create something compelling enough that hundreds of local television stations were willing to part with their precious airtime and even spend their own money airing it. And to do so for some part of 44 years. All to find a cure for a disease that afflicts right around 50,000 Americans. For the sake of comparison, more than 562,000 Americans die of cancer every year.

In 1966 Jerry Lewis didn’t enjoy the same prominence he did in, say, 1956. But it’s safe to say that to build up the MDA Lewis basically put his own career on perma-hold. Had Lewis thrown his considerable energy into his career in 1966 the way he did the MDA, Lewis almost certainly would have had 10 or 15 more good years as an actor and comedian and maybe 10 years beyond that as a director.

And there’s something sad about this old clown. Jerry Lewis might have been Bill Murray, the comedian so capable of both comedy and pathos, 10 years before Murray's talents were revealed to the world on Saturday Night Live.

I don’t know that I’d want to hang out with Jerry Lewis at a party the way I would another lively octogenarian, Betty White. But just as I revere Churchill I respect Jerry Lewis and what he has accomplished.

His many faults and foibles notwithstanding, you should too.

The First Country Band of Cause Marketing?

U2 gets my vote as the best cause marketers in rock and roll based on their efforts on behalf of [RED] and Bono’s own cause-marketed clothing line called ‘Edun.’

But which country act earns honors as the best country music cause marketers?

If you twisted my arm today I’d say the Zac Brown Band.

Marketing bands and their music these days is a whole lot different than it was when the labels did all the promotions (and took the lion's share of the revenue). File sharing changed all that.

When anyone can find your music for free on the file sharing websites, you can't rely on download sales alone for all your revenue. The resulting lower profit margins for the labels demands that bands assume greater responsibility for their own promotion. For the very smartest bands these new revenue models can actually be more lucrative.

The Zac Brown Band, a country music act, uses cause marketing as a part of its promotional mix.

Regular readers will remember that back in July 2010 Dodge sponsored a cause marketing effort that featured the Zac Brown Band in a promotion called ‘Letters for Lyrics.”

Here’s what I wrote then:

Write a letter to a soldier, take it to your local Dodge Ram dealer and you get the CD 'Breaking Southern Ground.' The campaign’s stated goal is to give away 1 million CDs. A download from the album is available from the Ram Trucks website.

In July 2011 the band announced a deal with outdoor retailer Gander Mountain that benefits the charity Soles4Souls, which provides shoes to children worldwide. When you buy a co-branded Zac Brown Band-Soles4Souls baseball cap at GanderMountain.com, proceeds go to the charity.

Reviewers on Gander Mountain are uniformly positive. Says one called ‘mydogpete:’ “Great looking hat that helps to support a good cause. Love listening to Zac Brown Band, too, so this makes me feel a little closer to the band.”

Is the Zac Brown Band the best cause marketers in country music? Nominate your favorite in the comments below.

Cause Marketing Our Thanks

Starting today you can use the We&Co smartphone app to thank firefighters, police officers and other first responders who distinguished themselves by their bravery, sacrifice and service during the attacks of 9/11 ten years ago in partnership with The New York Says Thank You Foundation. The goal is to generate 10,000 ‘thanks’ through the We&Co app.

We&Co is a location-based mobile app in the vein of Foursquare or Yelp. Only instead of rallying to sites to collect badges or grade meals, We&Co helps you to rate favorite service providers: a barista, stylist, bartender, waitress, and the like.

We&Co takes the emphasis off the place and puts it on the people. It’s the anti-Groupon, We&Co co-founder Jared Malan told Good, because instead of being drawn by discount prices people will come to establishments for outstanding service.

Service providers end up with their own ratings, which has the potential to become a kind of social currency. For that reason We&Co puts off a European vibe to me. In many countries of Europe being a waiter is professional career that comes with a commensurate salary. In the United States most people waiting tables aren’t professionals, they’re students (or 'actors,' as the cliché goes) working for tips.

The app, which is draws on Foursquare’s API, is free at the We&Co website or at the App Store. We&Co’s business model is based on local advertising dollars and aggregating and selling the collected data.

The New York Says Thank You Foundation commemorates the many acts of service that was visited upon New Yorkers and New York in the wake of 9/11 by sending out volunteers from New York and elsewhere to help communities recovering from their own disasters. Its “business model” is based on the heart-warming pay it forward model.

The match between We&Co and The New York Says Thank You Foundation, both of which are all about thanks, is just terrific. No doubt my friend (and distant cousin) Ryan Jones, another Me&Co co-founder, had some hand in making that match.

Remember that adage, popular a few years back, that in the information economy a company’s greatest assets walk out the door every night? Originally that meant engineers and developers and the like.

With its unique take on thanking people, We&Co has the potential show how true that is for the service economy too.