Making Cause Marketing More Systemic

Coca-Cola has been drawing neutral to positive reviews for its white can promotion benefiting the World Wildlife Fund. Mark me down as neutral to negative, because I don’t think it goes quite fair enough.

Here’s why: Amory Lovins, the slightly heterodox environmental scientist at the Rocky Mountain Institute has a new book out called “Reinventing Fire: Bold Business Solutions for the New Energy Era,” wherein he finds that we don’t often enough take a systemic approach to energy and resource conservation. The result is missed opportunity.

I think the same is true in cause marketing.

Here’s the outlines of the promotion as constituted: Starting tomorrow, Nov 1, 2011 through February 2012, Coke will release its flagship product in white cans in order to draw awareness of the plight of the Arctic and the shrinking habitat of the polar bear in particular. Coke has used polar bears in its advertising since 1922.

Coke will donate $1 million to the WWF and asks that Coke drinkers also donate to the WWF via text to donate. To donate $1 to the WWF, text the package code to 357357. Starting tomorrow you can also donate online at ArcticHome.com.

Coke will also match up to another $1 million in such donations. Coke’s total donation could therefore reach $3 million. Coke will also air ads and help sponsor a new IMAX film on the topic called ‘To the Arctic 3D.’

According to the Packaging Digest, “WWF has a vision to help protect the polar bear's Arctic home. This includes working with local residents to manage an area high in the Arctic where the summer sea ice will likely persist the longest. This area—potentially covering 500,000 square miles—could provide a home for the polar bear while protecting the cultural and economic needs of local people.”

The WWF enjoys a good reputation and I expect will make good use of the $3 million mitigating the effects of climate change on polar bear habitat.

But imagine, instead, that in addition to everything else Coke has pledged to do that it also promised to paint white the roofs of all the buildings that it owns or leases.

Most roofs are black and as such they absorb heat and light. White reflects heat and light back into the atmosphere.

Cecil Adams of the syndicated column The Straight Dope put it this way in a column published in April 2010, “according to Lawrence Berkeley Laboratories, white-coated roofs can reflect 60 to 85 percent of the solar energy that hits them and stay as little as nine degrees above air temperature. Dark-colored roofs, by contrast, typically reflect 20 percent of sunlight or less, and a black asphalt roof reflects only 5 percent.”

He goes on to write, “a white (or at least light-colored) roof provides two benefits. The first is reduced air conditioning costs, which can drop 15 to 20 percent. The second benefit is more cosmic. A lighter-colored roof will reflect as much as 80 percent of the solar radiation that hits your house back into space. This increases the albedo (reflectivity) of the planet, which could help reduce global warming-surely a worthwhile goal for any home improvement project.”

Coke’s business is basically to produce the syrup for its drinks and market the same. Local bottlers turn that syrup into the actual Coke products that you drink. So I doubt that Coke owns or leases even 1,000 buildings in North America.

But think of what Coke would be able to claim if it painted all its rooftops white. Coke would be saying, in effect, “we’re not just raising awareness of the effects of climate change on our beloved polar bear. We’re doing more than just helping polar bears through our partnership with the WWF. We’re doing our small part to actually increase the reflectivity of the planet.”

Future ads could feature the polar bears on the roof of Coke's headquarters building in Atlanta, cool and comfortable on the all-white roof.

So long as it didn’t over-reach, Coke could legitimately claim that it not only talks the talk, it walks the walk.

That’s a more systemic approach to cause marketing!

The World Series of Cause Marketing

The winner of the 2011 World Series will be determined tonight at Busch Stadium in St. Louis. But four causes, recognized during the first four games of the Series, have already won the big spotlight that the Fall Classic brings. Those causes are: Welcome Back Veterans; the Roberto Clemente Award; Boys and Girls Clubs of America; and Stand Up to Cancer.

Each was separately highlighted during the 2011 Series.

This is no small thing. Game 2, for instance, had 14.69 million viewers. Not quite ‘Dancing With the Stars’ numbers, but respectable given the two teams playing for the Championship this year.

The cause featured in Game 2 was the awarding of the 2011 Roberto Clemente Legacy award to David Ortiz, the designated hitter of the Boston Red Sox. The Roberto Clemente Award recognizes the MLB player who “best represents the game of baseball through positive contributions on and off the field.”

That’s video of Ortiz being recognized before the start of the game at the left. There was a little more to it than what’s shown in the video, but not much.

Indeed, every week during football season in college and professional stadiums across the country similar awards are given at halftime to students-athletes, community leaders, or alumni who have done their alma mater proud.

The major difference is that Chevrolet is footing the bill for the Roberto Clemente Award. And, of course, Game 2 had those 14.69 million television viewers.

Because such awards happen so frequently and because they always take the same approach, they’re almost unwatchable for anyone who isn’t personally involved. Both in the stadium, and on television. And, of course, they’re forgotten almost as soon as they’re over.

Roberto Clemente was a famous humanitarian. He died December 31, 1972 in an airline crash trying to deliver relief supplies to the victims of the massive Managua, Nicaragua earthquake that had happened earlier in December. His remains were never found.

So imagine if instead of showing Ortiz behind the statue of Clemente shaking hands with MLB and Chevrolet officials that instead they told the story of someone who has been helped by Ortiz doing whatever it is that won him the award.

Remember, people don’t get worked up over statistics of millions of people in jeopardy. Or, for that matter, millions of people helped. What moves them are the narratives… the stories… of individuals.

Imagine if Chevy and MLB offered a ‘Roberto Clemente Fellowship’ to a few hundred young fans to spend three months or six months doing service in rural Latin America, where Clemente did so much humanitarian work... and where MLB gets so many of its best players these days. Now imagine that their stories were told to MLB's fanbase.

Imagine if Chevy offered to match donations that TV viewers made via their cell phones to the ‘Roberto Clemente Memorial Education Fund’ to build schools in rural Latin America.

Imagine if MLB really wanted to get innovative with its cause partners and come up with something better than a static award presentation.

Long-Term, Committed Monogamy in Cause Marketing

Some sponsors do so much volume and have such great visibility and recognition that they almost have the pick of charities to partner with. So, like actor George Clooney, some sponsors have been seen with a lot of different pretty faces over the years.

Toys R Us has had cause marketing relationships with at least 4 charities in the last 20 years and is currently with Toys for Tots.

In the last year Purina, the pet foods brand, has done cause marketing campaigns with Adopt-A-Pet.com, as seen at the left, and with Susan G. Komen for the Cure.

But there is value to strict monogamy in cause marketing relationships. After all, which is cuter, George Clooney canoodling with girlfriend #32 or a couple that’s been married 65 years that still holds hands and snuggles?

With that in mind, here’s my short list of the positives of long-term monogamous cause marketing relationships.

Customers begin to think of you and your charity partner as an inseparable pair. And that’s good for both your brands. To illustrate, here’s a pop quiz…who’s the partner for these organizations/brands? (answers below).

• Subway
• Ronald McDonald House Charities
• Yoplait
• St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital

The relationships between your staffs deepens. Like an old couple you understand each other’s rhythms, moods, and annual calendars. And you accommodate yourself to your partner’s needs and disposition.

You understand each other’s business models. There’s a Steely Dan song called “Hey 19” that explains it all. The song is about the disappointment an older man feels with a younger lover at having to explain all the things meaningful to him. The pertinent line is: “Hey 19, that’s ‘Retha Franklin. She don’t remember the queen of soul…” There’s value in not having to perpetually explain everything to your partner.

Your communication has grown past the puppy love stage. You can speak frankly without upsetting each other. And you can raise really out-there ideas without worrying about losing face.

You become each other’s memory. I don’t remember where I read it, but someone once said that part of the pain of divorce is that when couples split they lose part of the memory that their partner had for the couple’s friends, events, feelings, facts and the like. Similarly, even with changing staffs chances are someone in the relationship remembers why one approach in the past did or did not work.

That’s my short list. Feel free to add to it in the comments below.

(Quiz answer key: Subway+American Heart Association; Ronald McDonald House Charities+McDonalds; Yoplait+ Susan G. Komen for the Cure; St. Jude Children's Research Hospital+Target).

Nature Valley Puts You In the National Parks

The thing you never understand about the Grand Canyon, until you actually go there, is that no photo does it justice. It’s so deep and so wide that the limited field of view provided by still or video cameras comes up seriously wanting. And no photo, by itself, is immersive enough either.

Now Nature Valley granola bars, a General Mills brand, is trying to do justice to the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, and Great Smokey National Parks by letting you experience them as a virtual hiker.

Nature Valley and its agency McCann Erickson sent camera crews to capture 100 or so trail miles in each park using much the same technology that Google does for its famed street views on Google Maps, only all the equipment was mounted on people, not vehicles.

In February 2012 Nature Valley will unveil the first stage online. And you and I can follow along at a real-time walking pace. Writes Joe Berkowitz on FastCompany.com, “the resulting concept…is a model for how marketers can make a useful contribution to a cause without over-branding it.”

I disagree with Berkowitz’s conclusions about over-branding causes. The only cause that comes close to being over-branded is breast cancer, and I'd argue long and hard that even the pink ribbon isn't over-branded either. As things stand, over-branding U.S. National Parks is simply impossible. Despite the current governmental budget woes, no one believes buffalo in Yellowstone will soon be sporting signs on their humps saying “This Vista Made Possible by Nature Valley.”

And having been there I can tell you that the only corporate logos you’re likely to see in the Grand Canyon itself are on backpacks or water bottles.

For the most part I’m with Dan Pallotta when he says that if we believe that marketing works, why do we hamstrung nonprofit causes by passive-aggressively insisting that they not spend the money necessary to do it right?

Pallotta’s example is that if the tobacco companies are spending $500 million a year on advertising and marketing, why do we howl when the American Cancer Society spends $1 million in combating those messages?

Nature Valley is a long-time supporter of the National Parks in the United States. Right now, in fact, for every UPC you enter from a box of Nature Valley, General Mills is donating $1 to the National Parks Conservation Association up to a maximum of $100,000.

I applaud Nature Valley for making these… what to call them?… ‘trail-umentaries,’ ‘docu-hikes.’ It’s a valuable service. Whatever their name, I plan to check them out next year.

But having experienced both Yellowstone and the Grand Canyon (although, regrettably, not the Smoky Mountains) up close and personal, my expectations will be very high.

Trick or Treat for UNICEF Embraces New Giving Tech

For three generations… since 1950… the United States Fund for UNICEF has sponsored Trick or Treat for UNICEF a door-to-door fundraiser conducted by children and meant to take place on or around Halloween, October 31.

In 60 years Trick or Treat for UNICEF has raised $164 million, an average of $2.7 million a year. Not bad!

But the problem, if you can call it that, is that the campaign has traditionally generated the donations in cash, with all the attendant challenges that entails.

Moreover, the people who donated last year are likely to be unknown to the United States Fund for UNICEF and almost certainly forgotten by the kids, meaning there’s little continuity from year to year.

Surely there’s a role here for technology.

And indeed the United States Fund for UNICEF has embraced a slick new way for kids to Trick or Treat for UNICEF.

Today kids can Trick or Treat for UNICEF, raise good sum of money and never touch a single nickel of it.

This Halloween the kids can print out a canister wrapper like the one at the left which features a QR code. When people scan the code using their smartphone they can make a direct donation to UNICEF.

What if the person who answers the door doesn’t have a smartphone or the necessary QR reader?

Well a persistent Trick or Treater also knows that people can text “TOT” to UNICEF (864233) to make a $10.00 donation to Trick-or-Treat for UNICEF. The $10 will be added to donor’s phone bill.

The United States Fund for UNICEF doesn’t mention it, but of course they’re collecting the phone numbers of donors. Come next Halloween they could message a prior donor directly. They could even send a punch list to kids asking them to knock specific doors of prior year’s donors.

If that sounds slightly creepy… even for Halloween… remember that that’s exactly how political candidates campaign door-to-door nowadays. Their party gives them a list of registered voters from their party broken out by their precinct/district. Then they specifically knock on the doors of people who belong to their party and are registered voters.

Kudos to the United States Fund for UNICEF for bringing this classic fundraiser up to date.

Subscribing to the Cause Marketing Blog is as Easy as Harry Potter's Accio Spell

Kind Readers:

Gwen D. from the Northumberland region of the U.K. (home to Hogwarts!) is the latest to join the Cause Marketing Google Newsgroup.

It’s super-easy to subscribe. Simply send me your name and your email address to aldenkeene at gmail dot com.

Like the Accio spell on Harry Potter which brings desirable objects to you, when you subscribe each new post comes directly to your email, usually every business day. It's like Muggle magic!

And like Gwen, when you subscribe I’ll also send you a PDF copy of the "Five Flavors of Cause Marketing" which explains Cause Marketing in an easy-to-follow matrix that includes examples.

It's a great brainstorming tool and helps ensure that your campaign has all the components appropriate for that flavor of Cause Marketing.

Rest assured that I will never sell your name or email address.

So join today.


Warm regards,

Paul
Aldenkeene at gmail dot com

Happy Birthday to the Cause Marketing Blog!

Five years ago on Tuesday October 17 I posted for the first time on this blog. On Tuesday November 1, 2011 I’ll celebrate my 700th post.

Since October 2010 I’ve posted, almost without exception, every business day. I compare it to writing a daily newspaper column, with all the attendant challenges of coming up with something new… or at least different… to say five days a week.

Like Ernest Hemingway famously said:

"There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed."

I don’t bleed with the same brio that Hemingway did. So my thanks to you my faithful readers for your patience when I’ve been a poor stylist, a bad grammarian, and the many times when I stopped before I had finished.

In remembrance of posts past here’s my very first one, which still has punch and force these 1800 or so days later, (even if I do say so myself).

Eyeballs vs. Tears

Barely a day goes by that I don't see some kind of cause-related marketing, some good and some not so good.

With this blog I will examine in detail those cause marketing promotions, advertising and campaigns; when they get it right, and where it goes wrong.

Cause-related marketing has been around for more than 20 years now. Even people who don't know the term, understand what it's all about; send in the Yoplait lid and 10 cents goes to the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation.

But, according to IEG, while cause-related marketing is growing faster than sponsorship as a whole, cause-related marketing currently represents less than 10 percent of the larger sponsorship market. That sounds like a positive, but cause-related marketing has been as high as 10 percent of sponsorship.

For all its heart, cause-related marketing is still settling for the sloppy seconds left over from the NFL, NASCAR and the like. I think that's because while those big guys understand that sponsorship is about eyeballs, the sisters of the orphans and all their charity cousins think it's about tears.

When it comes to cause-related marketing, they're only half right.

Payless Gives Shoes 4 Kids; the Basic Black Pump of Cause Marketing

This holiday season Payless ShoeSource will donate $1.2 million worth of shoes free of charge to children in North America, and 11 countries in the Caribbean and Latin America.

Now in its fourth year the program… called Payless Gives Shoes 4 Kids… is accepting applications from nonprofits right now at Paylessgives.com.

Having just finished Ross Shafer’s slender volume called ‘Grab More Market Share: How to Wrangle Business Away from Lazy Competitors,’ I wonder if Payless hasn’t come a little late to the party with this helpful if pedestrian program.

Shafer’s premise is that in tough economic times it may be easier and cheaper to out-compete rivals than to win over entirely new costumers by simply doing the things competitors are unwilling to do.

There’s a certain logic to Shafer’s thinking. Now-defunct electronics chain Circuit City spent many years and millions of dollars winning customers. And even if the stores weren’t the same as Best Buy it’s a simple transition for former Circuit City customers to shop now at Best Buy. By doing enough things better, Shafer argues, Best Buy sent Circuit City to the ash heap of retail history.

Payless, Shafer says, shuttered 218 stores in 2009, which he infers came as a result of the fast-growing Zappos.com, now owned by Amazon.com.

Zappos.com faces a number of challenges against a bricks and mortar retailer, none the least of which is that few of us are willing to buy a pair of shoes we haven’t worn. Zappos.com overcame that by allowing you to easily return shoes you don’t like free of hassle and shipping costs.

Zappos.com is famous for its customer service, while Payless is mainly famous for its low prices and stack ‘em deep, sell ‘em cheap merchandising.

One of the main benefits of cause marketing and the kind of philanthropy represented by Payless Gives Shoes 4 Kids is that it can help companies standout from competitors and give them a new story to tell the public and the press.

Something that TOMS Shoes, in comparison to Payless, does very well.

In fact, as I think about it, if TOMS Shoes buy one, give one cause marketing efforts were a sexy slingback, then Payless's philanthropic efforts would be basic black pump.

Nothing wrong with a basic black pump, of course. But it's not what people talk about.

Cause for Dessert

If you’re a restaurant, even in a quick-service category, it’s hard to imagine a transactional cause marketing campaign you could launch more easily or quickly than a dessert promotion. When a customer buys a slice of cake, pie, a dish of ice cream, or some other dessert you make a donation to your cause partner.

In most cases you wouldn’t want to promote a salad or a main course. At a sit-down restaurant most customers come into your establishment to order an entrée and in many cases you probably give them a salad with the meal. So you don’t need to promote entrees.

But with an appetizer, drink or dessert promotion you could quite possibly raise the average ticket price by several dollars.

Drinks have very high margins, of course, and consequently they have often been featured in cause marketing promotions. But most of the cause marketing around mixed drinks that I’ve seen involve a custom flavor that somehow befits the cause.

There’s nothing wrong with that, of course. It just requires the lead time to figure out what that special drink is and to stock up on the necessary inventory.

Drinks could, however, be a bad mix for certain causes.

Desserts are potentially more universal than drinks since even youngsters and teetotalers (like moi) could order one. And while there’s a handful of causes you probably couldn’t partner with… anti-obesity causes come to mind…I reckon there’s more safe ground with dessert than drink promotions.

For many of the same reasons appetizers can be a good choice for cause marketing, too.

The above ad is for a special pie benefiting Susan G. Komen for the Cure from Village Inn, a national chain in the United States.

Through October 31, 2011 when you buy a whole Berry Pink Pie, $1 will go to Susan G. Komen for the Cure. The maximum donation is unstated, but the minimum is $25,000.

Village Inn has created a custom pie for the Komen promotion, but you don’t necessarily need to follow suite. You could probably something from your regular dessert menu.

Likewise, Village Inn is promoting the sales of whole pies here. But depending on your margins, chances are you could do just fine donating $1 out of $4-$7 dollar single plate of dessert.

The key in such a promotion is… well… the promotion. How are you going to tell customers and prospective customers about it?

Telling customers is easy. Brief your service staff on the promotion. You make even offer some kind of incentive for them to push the promoted dessert item. You could put it in the menu, on table tents, on internal posters, etc.

Village Inn is activating the promotion externally with this FSI (Free-Standing Insert). If you already advertise, you should add a picture of the item and a few sentences of description about the cause and the promotion. If you don’t advertise, you should certainly send out some press releases, post it to your website/Facebook (and other social media), Tweet out the daily results, maybe even do some kind of thematically appropriate publicity stunt.

Honestly, this is the closest thing to a turn-key cause marketing promotion as I can think of for a restaurant.

Corporate Citizenship In a Time of Occupy Wall Street

Boston College Center for Corporate Citizenship released its annual CSR Index the other day even as Occupy Wall Street and its satellite efforts continue their protests that are, in part, anti-corporate.

The top 10 were:

Publix Super Markets
Google
UPS
Kellogg’s
Amazon.com
Berkshire Hathaway
FedEx
Campbell Soup
Baxter International
3M

By my count I’ve seen cause marketing from six of the top 10 and 33 of the full list of 50 companies.

According to the BCCCC the index is based on a survey of “how the public perceives a company in three dimensions:”

"Citizenship: Does the company contribute positively to its surrounding community in a socially and environmentally responsible fashion?

"Governance: Is the company business run in a fair and transparent fashion? Do stakeholders associate the company with high ethical business standards?

"Workplace: Are employees treated fairly and paid a decent wage? Does the company invest in developing employee skill sets and career opportunities?"

Notably, in the wake of Occupy All Street, there’s only two banks on the list, neither of which are Wall Street heavyweights.

In this list, it’s good to face the consumer to some degree. I count only seven that don’t sell directly to consumers. Oracle, for instance, and Caterpillar.

Conspicuous by their absence are brands like Ben & Jerry’s… itself active in Occupy Wall Street… and progressive companies like Stonyfield Farms and Tom’s of Maine.

Given the context, what lessons can you take from the BCCCC list?

I think there's one lesson for sure. Americans want corporations who are better actors. Good cause marketing can be a signal that companies are good corporate citizens.

Parting the Kimono (a little) on Cause Marketing ROI

I’m working a speech I’ll give next week on cause marketing and the meeting planners asked if I could share some actual ROI data.

Such data isn’t impossible to discover. But it’s not at all common.

You don’t have too think to hard about it to know why this is so. If a transactional cause marketing was based on sales, then it would be a matter of simple arithmetic for a competitor to figure out unit sales during the time period of the cause marketing promotion, something most companies would be reluctant to reveal.

For different reasons we don’t always know what charities net out of their cause marketing efforts, even though their 990 tax return tell us how much money individual U.S. charities take in overall.

But in just the last week, I’ve seen two prominent cause marketers who have parted the kimono… but only a little… on actual results.

In a news item published October 14, 2011 the executive director of the Susan G. Komen for the Cure chapter in central Oklahoma, Lorna Palmer… revealed that in 2010 cause marketing efforts generated about $300,000 of the $700,000 that the chapter distributed in its 10-county service area. The rest came from race events.

I don’t know what Komen’s formula is for distributing cause marketing proceeds, but here’s some simple back on the envelope figuring.

Komen has right around 120 chapters. If you figure that the average across all the chapters is somewhere between half as much as what the Central Oklahoma chapter took in and twice as much, then by itself cause marketing might be worth somewhere between $18 million and $72 million to Komen in 2010.

Nice!

Meanwhile, on the sponsor side of the equation Procter & Gamble’s Pampers brand of diapers experienced year-over-year growth “even in its toughest markets” thanks to the brand’s buy-one give-one promotion (BOGO). Buy a package of Pampers and P&G donates the price of a tetanus vaccination for newborn babies in the developing world, about $0.12 cents per package. The charity partner is UNICEF.

The sales results are vague, of course, but the good news is that the World Health Organization projects that if the campaign continues apace that tetanus will be eliminated by 2015.

What a claim to be able to make on your annual or corporate social responsibility report!

If you’d know of or have seen actual results from a cause marketing effort, please share them with me. I’d love to plug them into my speech. Contact me at aldenkeene at gmail dot com.

I Don’t Hate All the Cause Marketing I See. Honest.

I looked back at my posts over the last few weeks and found little enthusiasm and a lot of criticism of the cause marketing efforts I’ve seen lately.

I’m beginning to wonder if I’m like the drunk test performed on Steve Martin in the 1983 movie “The Man with Two Brains.” Martin’s character, who is in Germany, gets pulled over by the polizei and given a sobriety test that requires him to stretch out his arms and touch his nose, walk a straight line and then return doing a two-handed and one-handed handstand, perform cartwheels and backflips, and then juggle and tap dance while singing a German song.

Martin pauses before undertaking that last part and says to the police officer, “…damn your drunk tests are hard.”

Watch the clip here.

What can I say? Everyone thinks that cause marketing is easy. And it is. If you’re the type who can juggle, tap dance, and sing at the same time.

So gird up. Because I’m going to be hard on another cause marketing sponsor.

The weekly sales flyer for Fresh Markets, a local grocery chain, included the inset image at the left. Libby’s, which produces canned vegetables, is asking for help for the local Habitat for Humanity chapter. Buy an extra can of Libby’s vegetables and they’ll go local Habitat for Humanity families so that they “can enjoy a meal together.”

It’s a subset of Libby’s “Get Back to the Table” promotion. The website lists a number of reasons why family mealtime is vitally important. As a father of young children, I buy that argument.

But what, pray tell, does any of this have to do with Habitat for Humanity, which Libby’s apparently supports here in my market and elsewhere across the country?

The copy just can’t draw the connection.

Is a connection possible between Libby’s and Habitat?

Could be. Libby’s could frame this as a way to stock the pantries of new Habitat home move-ins. Or maybe there’s a statistic that says Habitat families experience greater food need in the Fall. Or that socio-economic realities tear harder at the fabric of Habitat families more than most, so dinner-time is vital in more ways than one.

Instead, Libby’s just drops its Back to the Table effort into the grocer’s ad, slaps on a Habitat logo and says to consumers, ‘you figure it out.’

Good luck with that.

And don’t get me started on the sad-sack image of the little girl…

Should Breast Cancer Awareness Be About the Breast More Than the Disease?

Should breast cancer awareness ever be more about the breast than it is the cancer?

I wonder when I see ads like the one at the left by Estee Lauder.

Over the last few years there’s been a general sexualizing of the disease that troubles me.

Don’t get me wrong. Part of the early genius of Susan G. Komen for the Cure and her sister breast cancer charities was the recognition that breast cancer was different for women than, say, lung cancer, even if a cancer in the breast might be only a few centimeters away from a cancer in the lung.

One reason why Komen et al acquired so much momentum is because there’s a personalness to breast cancer that also touches things like feminine sexuality. Survivors fight more than just the disease. Even as a clueless man I get that.

Breast cancer affects a women’s sense of self in ways that other diseases, say, heart disease—which kills twice as many women in the United States as breast cancer—do not.

But I don’t think the cause is well-served by ads like this, which I found in the November 2011 Lucky magazine. Lucky, of course, casts itself as the ‘magazine about shopping.’ On the cover of the November 2011 issue is Kim Kardashian, who, if reports are to be believed, is all about shopping, too. Lucky is a young woman’s magazine. I have a hard time imagining this ad running in Town & Country. It's evident to me that with this ad Estee Lauder is deliberately targeting young women.

The ad itself is ostensibly about raising awareness of breast cancer for young women. And maybe entice them to find out the name of the pink Estee Lauder lipstick the models are wearing.

Now I’m sure the creative director for the ad (what are the chances it’s a man?) would say something like “young women think they’re immune to breast cancer. The creative demonstrates that they have something precious to lose unless they practice the principles of early detection.”

But this is counter-factual. According to the latest data from the National Center for Health Statistics of the 1.1 million women who have received a breast cancer diagnoses in the United States from 1999 to 2004 just 5,075 were aged 20-29, about 1,015 per year. By contrast, 128,604 American woman aged 55-59 were diagnosed with breast cancer during the 5-year period, the highest rate among all age ranges.

In other words, the crest of the bell curve for breast cancer diagnoses in America are for women in their 50s. Are there young women who are exceptions? Sure. About 1,000 a year.

(Citation: United States Cancer Statistics: 1999 - 2004 Incidence Archive, WONDER On-line Database. United States Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and National Cancer Institute; August 2008. Accessed at http://wonder.cdc.gov/cancer-v2004.html on Oct 11, 2011 11:56:55 PM).

Moreover, young women could hardly have missed breast cancer awareness message between the walks, the runs, the ads, the oodles of cause marketing, and a widespread media and sponsorship blitz that includes the NFL!

Man or woman, there’s few places in North America where you could get away from it if you wanted too.

Let me illustrate with a personal anecdote: the other day I was watching a panel discussion on breast cancer on the Spanish-language ESPN over lunch at a Brazilian restaurant. The panel’s guest was the deputy director of oncology at a Mexican cancer institute… my Spanish is of the high school variety... so I can't be more specific than that. I watched in wonder as the good doctor showed the host… also a man… how to do a self-exam! The pink ribbons on set made it clear they weren’t talking about the heartbreak of male breast cancer either.

No, this ad is about sexualizing the disease.

As a culture we can do better.

Respecting Your Cause Marketing Partner

From Freschetta, the bake-at-home pizza brand found in your grocer’s freezer case, comes a pink ribbon cause marketing campaign that seems slightly ashamed of its esteemed non-profit partner.

Here’s the campaign: when you buy pink-beribboned packages of Freschetta pizza products and Schwan Food Company, the brand's owner, will donate $1 up to $50,000 total to guess who?

You almost have to guess because the type is so small in this FSI (Free-Standing Insert) you might not be able to read it without the help of artificial magnification. It's only slightly better on Freschetta's website, which requires an extra click behind the mention of the campaign on the home page to find out who it benefits.

In fact, with the aid of magnification and good strong light, I can report that the ad says the donation is headed towards Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, one of the most respected hospitals and cancer research facilities in the world.

Maybe Schwan is concerned that Memorial Sloan-Kettering is a fly-by-night outfit.

In fact, the hospital had its founding in 1884 when John Astor and other robber barons of the era threw in a few nickels. Fifteen years later Memorial Sloan-Kettering was substantially funded by John D. Rockefeller. It’s named for the two donors that funded the SKI cancer research center in the 1940s, Alfred P. Sloan, the legendary CEO of General Motors and Charles Kettering, another GM executive.

Schwan Food Company could hardly find a more established and venerable partner for Freschetta.

So why so little respect of its nonprofit partner from Schwan?

One possibility, of course, is that Memorial Sloan-Kettering asked Schwan to go low-key in this promotion.

But barring that, what could possess the sponsor from shouting about their partnership from the rooftops?

Tip of the hat to Kate in Louisville.

What Comes After ‘Pink Pledges’ in Cause Marketing?

More pink ribbon cause marketing, this time from retailer Dress Barn.

For every 'Lilac' plush toy animal sold for $6 through Dec. 31, 2011, Dress Barn will send “the entire net profit of at least $2.50 to support local and national breast cancer initiatives” at the American Cancer Society.”

Lilac was featured on the inside front cover flap of the “Late Fall 2011” Dress Barn catalog.

I much admire the clear language in this appeal. The American Cancer Society will receive the entire profit from the sale each plush toy and naming a specific dollar figure. Would that more sponsors were as transparent.

The bottom portion of the flap encourages people to ‘Take the Pink Pledge.’ Point your smart phone at the QR code or go to yourdressbarn.com/mypinkpledge and you can post online your cancer story or Take the Pink Pledge. As of this writing they had 3,413 pledges.

Variations of Dress Barn’s ‘Pink Pledge’ have been around forever. Dress Barn’s asks you for your name and email address and prompts you with “I pledge to take care of myself by…” Then, for who knows what reason, limits your response to 500 characters.

As of that last paragraph, I had spilled approximately 918 characters, right around a half-page of text. Perhaps Dress Barn’s IT people are worried that people would be so verbose that the company might have to spend an extra $50 a month for another terabyte of server-space.

But never mind all that.

I think it’s time that we found a call to action that is a little substantive than those like the Pink Pledge. Ultimately, pledges are about changing behavior, getting that dreaded mammogram, for instance, dropping a few pounds, starting an exercise program, doing self-exams more regularly, etc. A pledge is a promise to do…or not do… something. But that’s all it is.

And while I believe that the behavioral psychology literature shows that writing something down dramatically improves your chances of actually undertaking it, because of the ephemeral nature of such pledges on a website that you’ll only visit once, I doubt it holds true in this instance.

Imagine instead that in addition to selling Lilac that Dress Barn offered a donation of money and/or volunteer hours to the Cancer Society based on actual behavioral changes. Lowered your fat intake 10%. Tell us about it and Dress Barn will donate $3 to the Cancer Society. Got that mammogram? Excellent! Tell us more and Dress Barn employees will donate an hour to the Cancer Society.

The telling part would create a sense of social proof, that phenomena of persuasion whereby people assume that if other people have done something it must be OK for you to do it too.

How would Dress Barn know what people might respond to? Well, as it’s currently constituted, the Pink Pledge will generate thousands of responses. Dress Barn could simply parse those results to get a sense of the kinds of behavior people think they need to change.

The result would really move the needle on breast cancer awareness and prevention, instead of merely pledging to do so.

The Importance of Proper Positioning for Charities in Today's Economy

Dear Friends:

What follows is an address I made yesterday to a nonprofit coalition. I spoke without Powerpoint, otherwise I just post the slides on Slideshare. What follows is the text of my speech about nonprofit positioning in a time of great need.

Warm regards,
Paul

If like me, you believe that charities (or, nonprofits, or causes) have a vital role to play in the American civil society then you have to acknowledge that charities are being pressed from two sides right now and that many face existential crisis.

On the one side because of cutbacks in funding from government and donors, budgets are down and probably going to get worse before they get better. On the other side…especially for causes provide direct services… the needs have never been more pronounced.

Now maybe sometime soon the economy will rebound and we can get back to normal, whatever that means. But I don’t think normal means what it used to mean. Nine years ago a colleague and were speaking to a group of nonprofits gathered in Trento, Italy for a conference.

After our presentation a nonprofit executive from Rome approached us. Like most of his European colleagues his largest source of funding was from the government. Trouble is, his charity had fallen out of favor with government officials and his source of government funding was drying up. He needed a new source of financial support and fast. That was his new normal.

I’m not a futurist but I suspect that even once the economy recovers… and it will… and donations and government funding rebound, things may never be back to normal as we understood it in 2008. Like my Italian friend I suspect we’re all going to have to adjust to this ‘new normal.’

I’m a marketer and not surprisingly I think the principles of marketing can help us better prepared for that uncertain future.

Here’s what were going to discuss this hour. I’m going to provide case studies of famous causes that are well marketed, then do a little exercise. We’re going to talk about the marketing principle called positioning and we’ll do another exercise related to it. And we’ll end with a third exercise that helps put these pieces together into a greater whole and includes a tactical brainstorming session, because everyone likes to dream up tactics. Then I’ll have a few concluding remarks. All with no Powerpoint because I don’t want to risk turning off the lights so soon after breakfast!

So let’s start. I believe that the charities that will thrive in the future will not only be the best performers, but those that can best explain their points of distinction and position themselves best in the minds of their constituencies against their competitors.

I believe that because that has always been the case. Here’s a little exercise for you. By rights, you might think that the 10 diseases and health conditions that kill the most Americans are represented by the 10 biggest charities, wouldn’t you? That makes the most rational sense. We should send the greatest resources to causes engaged in the biggest fights, right?

I’m going to hand you something that’s printed on both sides. On one side is a list of the 10 biggest killers of Americans. On the reverse is the 10 largest health charities in America in terms of funds raised annually, but listed alphabetically. In this first exercise I want you to number the charities from the largest to the smallest in terms of funds raised.

(Refer to my really cheap-looking graphic at the left).

As you can see there’s little relation between the number of Americans killed and the amount of resources Americans spend on health charities.

Why is that so?

I would argue that, to use the vocabulary of marketing, the biggest charities in particular have positioned themselves better than their competitors.

What does ‘positioning’ mean in the context of marketing?

The concept of positioning was invented Jack Trout and Al Ries.

According to Trout and Reis, “positioning is not what you do to a product. Positioning is what you do to the mind of the prospect. That is, you position (place) the product in the mind of the prospect.”

Positioning is the means by which marketers try to create an image or identity for a product, brand, or company in the perception of the target market. What matters is how potential buyers see the product relative to the position of competitors. The theory behind positioning is that consumers just don’t have that much mental space (or energy) for too many things in one category.

The classic example is the car rental business. Among the full-service agencies you can be either Hertz or Avis. Early on Avis realized that it was number two, so the company positioned itself as the agency that tries harder. Who’s number three among the full service agencies? Who knows? Who cares?

Trout and Ries would argue that’s there’s precious little room for a number three in the mind of the prospect. For that matter there’s precious little shelf space in the store for number three. On the soup aisle there’s room for Campbell’s and Progresso.

Wait a minute, you say, when you go to the airport there’s also Budget, and Alamo and Enterprise and a handful of others. Where do those guys fit in? And when you go to the soup aisle there’s a gajillion choices. How does positioning address that?

Well, the name Budget answers that question for you. Budget is the discounter. And in the soup aisle Progresso positions itself against the much-larger category leader… Campbell’s… by selling only non-condensed soup, which has always been Campbell’s bailiwick. In that way Progresso is like Avis; number two and glad to be there. Everyone else, including the house brands, are there for sloppy seconds.

By contrast, Budget and the other guys have put themselves into a different category… and thereby carved out a different piece of mind space… then the full-service car rental agencies. Most Enterprise locations, for instance, are off airport property, that’s why they promise to ‘pick you up.’

Because of that positioning and smart operations, Enterprise is now the largest and most profitable of the car rental agencies and has been for at least 10 years.

So even if you’re in a business where there’s plenty of competition… hamburger stands, for instance… there’s still opportunity, so long as you position yourself right. That is, so long as you carve out a category in your customer’s mind that isn’t already occupied by someone more dominant.

Think about it. There’s dozens of sub-categories of retail discounters. WalMart’s a discounter. So is Costco, so is Trader Vic’s, and Harbor Freight. But they’ve all positioned themselves differently in the marketplace. And while there’s some overlap, no one would confuse Costco for Harbor Freight, or WalMart for Trader’s Vic’s. Positioning isn’t just brand attributes, although that’s part of it, or features or benefits or solutions. It’s about figuring out what part of the mind of the prospect you can own.

A successful positioning strategy is usually rooted in a company's sustainable competitive advantage. Positioning can be based on several things, including:

• Product features
• Benefits, needs, or solutions
• Use categories
• Usage occasions
• Placing and comparing it relative to another product
• Product class dissociation

Conceptually, three bases of positioning can be distinguished:

1. Functional positioning (solve problems, provide benefits to customers)
2. Symbolic positioning (self-image enhancement, ego identification, belongingness and social meaningfulness, affective fulfillment)
3. Experiential positioning (provide sensory stimulation, provide cognitive stimulation)

Typically, a product positioning process involves the following stages:

• Identify competing products
• Identify the attributes (also called dimensions) that define the product 'space'
• Collect information from a sample of customers about their perceptions of each product on the relevant attributes
• Determine each products' share of mind
• Determine each products' current location in the product space
• Determine the target market's preferred combination of attributes (referred to as an ideal vector)
• Examine the fit between: the positions of competing products, the position of your product and the position of the ideal vector
• Select optimum position

In retrospect organizations like Komen or MDA or St. Jude seem so inevitable. Of course Komen is the biggest breast cancer charity, we think, fighting breast cancer is just so vital.

But of course it wasn’t inevitable at all. In 1982 breast cancer was under-funded, under-recognized and under-appreciated as a killer of women. By its actions and by careful application of the principles of positioning Komen made the fight against breast cancer seem inevitable.

They didn’t always get everything right and Komen and MDA both draw fire even today for various reasons. But they got enough right, figured out their positioning and marketing and then persisted long enough that they literally changed the nonprofit landscape. That same opportunity is available to you.

Remember the famous quote from anthropologist Margaret Mead: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”

Advanced Placement Cause Marketing

J. Walter Thompson’s white paper, called 'Social Good,' has attracted a fair amount of attention, including (critical) mention in these pages.

Most of the press has taken some variation on a theme of how consumers are increasingly critical of cause marketing, a conclusion I was critical of based on several loaded questions JWT asked in its survey. But buried farther down in Social Good survey was a question that I think is very credible.

Some 75 percent of those surveyed in Canada, the UK and the U.S. agreed that “brands and companies don’t disclose enough information about their charity/social cause programs.”

This mirrors exactly what Cone found in its 2010 study. Seventy-five percent of Americans "want to hear about the results of corporate/nonprofit partnerships."

Few cause marketers, corporate or nonprofit, get this right. But it couldn't be more vital to giving successful cause marketing the transparency it requires.

People want to know that progress is being made. Cone says this means that people want to know about "the positive effect on the social issue, the money raised."

And that's true. But it only scratches the surface. People want to know if companies actually kept their pledges, and wrote the checks they promised. They want to know if the nonprofit actually built that playground, or helped that veteran's group. They want to sense that progress is being made.

And, fear not, they understand that intractable problems...like curing diseases or ending poverty in the developing world...require long-term approaches.

Part of the challenge of course is that the mainstream media won't often bite on a story that tells how a campaign did. The mainstream media requires novelty. And a story about a sponsor who kept their pledge or a nonprofit that effected some change probably doesn't meet that requirement.

No matter. You must still send out that press release to demonstrate transparency, to keep your company or nonprofit in front of editor's eyes, and to underscore that your firm or nonprofit has integrity.

Of course you can also buy media. If purchased media is already in your budget, be sure to carve out a piece of it for the follow-up efforts.

If your budget doesn't include purchased media, remember that we live in an era when any nonprofit or company can be its own media outlet. There should be a prominent place on your website or Facebook page that declares just what the campaign accomplished.

Shoot on results on your Flip-style camera and post on your website and Youtube/Vimeo some video of the meeting wherein the check is presented. Post pictures from your digital camera on your site and on Flickr of the events related to the campaign. Record and post a radio-style audio story on the who, what, when, where and why of the campaign. Put together a post-campaign Powerpoint and post it to Slideshare. Etc.

Emily Post famously said: "manners grease the wheels of social interaction."

In a like way, transparency greases the wheels for cause marketing effectiveness.

Or, at least, that's what three-quarters of Americans, Brits and Canadians say.

Integrated Cause Marketing with Starbucks and MSNBC

Long-time readers know I’m a sap when it comes to integrated cause marketing campaigns that are activated across multiple media because I believe they’re more effective and because… having done of few of these campaigns myself… I know how much hard work they are.

Here’s how this one works: When you buy a package of Starbucks branded Morning Joe coffee, “Starbucks with MSNBC will donate to the DonorsChoose.org project of your choice.” You redeem it online at DonorsChoose.org using the code from the package of Morning Joe coffee.

The ‘with MSNBC’ line, I suspect, means that MSNBC is donating airtime to the promotion rather than cash.

Morning Joe is the name of the MSNBC morning talk show hosted by former member of (U.S) Congress from Florida, Joe Scarborough, along ‘with’ Mika Brzezinski and Willie Geist.

Starbucks has been a sponsor... of one flavor or another… of Morning Joe since June 2009, drawing scrutiny and criticism from media watchdogs and others. The Starbucks logo is embedded into the Morning Joe set and graphics.

Previously bags of Starbucks’ Morning Joe coffee were available exclusively at Target and Starbucks locations. With this promotion Morning Joe coffee is available at grocers nationwide. (One wonders how the end of Target’s exclusivity agreement played out.)

I’ve already tipped my hand about my admiration for this campaign. But I think it could be improved. Scarborough is a Republican who prides himself as a moderate. Back in August 2011, the billionaire CEO of Starbucks, Howard Shultz, pledge to stop making campaign donations to incumbent politicians until and unless there was a plan from Congress to control the nation’s debt.

By September 2011 Shultz had induced a 100 other CEOs to sign his pledge and they took out a full-page ad in the New York Times declaring their intentions:

“First, to withhold political campaign contributions until a transparent, comprehensive, bipartisan debt-and-deficit package is reached that honestly, and fairly, sets America on a path to long-term financial health and security. Second, to do all we can to break the cycle of economic uncertainty that grips our country by committing to accelerate investment in jobs and hiring.”

In other words, Shultz is a moderate of some stripe, too.

And he hit a chord. Although anyone who knows American history can recall times when the political class was more divisive, it’s no picnic right now. And facing a host of problems at home and abroad, Americans are tired of the discord.

Imagine, then, a segment on Morning Joe (the show) wherein every time politicians or pundits from opposite sides of an issue publicly agreed with each other in some substantive way that some moderator from the show would deposit $100 of Starbucks’ money into a jar for DonorsChoose.org. It would be like the office ‘swear jar’ only in reverse.

And instead of pressing politicians and pundits to always beat each other up... which can, of course, be wonderfully entertaining... Morning Joe’s hosts would press for the occasional accord. It would be a win-win.

Scarborough could end the show tallying up the money and saying something like how smooth Starbucks goes down.

I think it's the best idea I've had this morning!

The Enduring Power of the Pink Ribbon

Every October... National Breast Cancer Awareness Month... I write a post wherein I bow admiringly (and low!) to the power of the pink ribbon. This month in America you can’t swing a leaf rake without hitting breast cancer fundraising or awareness in the store, the mall, your home, or in any media outlet.

To wit this FSI (Free-Standing Insert) page from Brillo, which makes steel wool scrubbing pads infused with a detergent, usually green but for the next little while available in pink-ribbon pink.

When you buy a pack of Brillo pads, $0.25 goes to the Breast Cancer Research Foundation, up to a limit of $50,000.

Brillo doesn’t even bother messaging this promotion to breast cancer. Why bother? Only some crazily-creative Hollywood writer-type… Joss Whedon, maybe?…could possibly draw a link between breast cancer and Brillo pads that comes across as empowering rather than sexist.

Instead, Brillo plays it absolutely straight. Here’s the pink Brillo pads, here’s Breast Cancer Research Foundation’s logo featuring the pink ribbon, here’s what the donation is when you buy the product.

This is exactly the kind of cause marketing that Carol Cone, the doyenne of cause marketing, told us was dead. This is precisely the kind of old-school cause marketing that JWT described as retrograde in its white paper called 'Social Good.'

You know what? So strong is the affinity of the pink ribbon, that I’ll bet you a case of pink Brillo pads that this promotion meets all of Brillo’s sales goals for it.

Anyone want to take me up on that bet?

I Have a Bone to Pick About JWT's Trend Report Called 'Social Good'

‘Social Good,’ a white paper and research report from JWT, the marketing agency and division of WPP, has made a lot of appearances in my RSS reader since its release in September 2011 usually with some variation of a headline like ‘customers increasingly dubious about cause marketing.’

Color me dubious about JWT’s research methodologies, if not its conclusions.

'Social Good' is well-written, stuffed with a broad range of interesting examples and case studies from across the globe… a few from JWT clients… which is why I think of it as a lengthy white paper rather than something weightier. JWT calls it a trend report. Nonetheless, I suggest that everyone involved in cause marketing read 'Social Good.'

Moreover, I’m in no position to quarrel with many of its conclusions about the need for greater transparency in cause marketing, deeper integration between cause and sponsor, and more accountability from causes, having made all of these arguments myself in this very blog.

All that said ‘Social Good’ also something of a lie. It’s like that James Frey book 'A Million Little Pieces' that got a coveted spot in the Oprah Book Club and was presented as non-fiction memoir but turned out to be largely a work of fiction. Initially, Oprah defended ‘Pieces’ as true in spirit if not in fact, before beating Frey and his editor up pretty bad during an interview on her show in 2006.

Here’s why: to get to its conclusions about consumer discomfiture with cause marketing, JWT relied on two leading questions in a section they labeled the “Rise of Consumer Cynicism and Expectation for Transparency.” Here are all the questions presented under that rubric:

"I’m skeptical of brands that are aligned with charitable/social causes, their efforts seem somewhat halfhearted"

"I’m sometimes suspicious about how much of the money I donate actually goes to people in need, as opposed to management and administrative costs"

"Brands that are aligned with charitable/social causes need to do a better job of telling me how my donation is benefiting the cause"

"Brands and companies don’t disclose enough information about their charity/social cause programs"

"I do background research to learn exactly how my funds are allocated before donating money to a charitable organization"

"I wish there was an easier way to see the direct impact my time/monetary donations have"

JWT did more than survey people about cause marketing. There’s questions about consumer expectation for responsible business, consumer desire for brand involvement, consumer desires to have their voices heard in local decision making, and more. But only when asking people about cause marketing did JWT feel the need to ask loaded questions like numbers 1 and 2 above.

And yet even with the answer thoughtfully provided in question #1 just 52% of respondents agreed with it. Question #2, also loaded, presumes that administrative and management costs are ipso facto always bad and helps respondents to the same conclusion. JWT surveyed adults aged 18-66 in Canada, the UK and the United States.

JWT concludes from the answers to these questions that:

“Cynical and savvy, today’s consumers expect greater accountability from nonprofits as well as brands involved in cause marketing—e.g., exactly where the money is going and what impact it’s having. More transparency will mean more focus on effecting real change and less ‘goodwashing.’”

And that puts me in the awkward Oprah position. Yes cause marketing should feature greater transparency and accountability. That has always been the right answer. But not because some heavily-marketed opinion survey helped marketers to the right answer. Cause marketing must be more transparent and accountable because it’s the right thing to do. Because it’s the moral thing to do.

David Brooks, a columnist at the New York Times, recently reported the results from another study conducted by researchers at Notre Dame University and elsewhere and lead by sociologist Christian Smith. The study asked college-aged Americans about things like moral dilemmas they had faced. Only instead of providing multiple choice answers as in a college exam, or a sliding scale of agreement as in the JWT survey, Smith and his cohorts asked open-ended questions. What they found, Brooks writes, is that today’s 18-23-year-olds don’t have the “categories or vocabulary to do so.”

"‘Not many of them have previously given much or any thought to many of the kinds of questions about morality that we asked,’" Smith and his co-authors write. When asked about wrong or evil, they could generally agree that rape and murder are wrong. But, aside from these extreme cases, moral thinking didn't enter the picture, even when considering things like drunken driving, cheating in school or cheating on a partner. "’I don't really deal with right and wrong that often,’" is how one interviewee put it.”

Here’s a start, leading questions presented as fact are wrong, no matter if the end results happen to also be right.