My Case for Cause Marketing

Cause Marketing—good or bad?  Let’s see…

Will Marré, branding speaker, is a strong proponent for cause marketing and in Author Will Marré Says Nike’s Livestrong Campaign is Compelling Case of Why Businesses Worldwide Should Adopt Cause Marketing Today discusses how cause marketing can be beneficial for everyone involved if the cause perfectly aligns with the brand and taps the six sources of brand energy: physical, emotional, mental, social, spiritual, and emotional.  You can see Marré speak on the subject on YouTube.

In Cause Marketing Matters to Consumers Kim T. Gordon also makes a case for cause marketing.  She states, “There’s a strong connection between entrepreneurship and giving.  The challenge is to make your socially responsible efforts a winning proposition for the nonprofit group you support, the community and your business.”  She gives these five steps for a strong cause marketing campaign: 1) Give from the heart, 2) Choose a related cause 3) Contribute more than dollars 4) Formalize your affiliation, 5) Mount a marketing campaign.

One creative website refers to cause marketing as Selfish Giving whose punch line is, “A cause marketer’s musings on doing well and good.”  The website is a great resource and proponent of cause marketing.

While cause marketing can be widely successful and positive for all involved, it’s not without its criticisms.  Referring to cause marketing as consumption philanthropy, Angela M. Eikenberry states in The Hidden Costs of Cause Marketing, “Consumption philanthropy individualizes solutions to collective social problems, distracting our attention and resources away from the neediest causes, the most effective interventions, and the act of critical questioning itself. It devalues the moral core of philanthropy by making virtuous action easy and thoughtless. And it obscures the links between markets—their firms, products, and services—and the negative impacts they can have on human well-being.”

Marré even admits to the downside of cause marketing in his blog, Cause Marketing is the First Step in A More Virtuous Business World, stating, “Of course there is a lot of fake cause marketing going on, companies that pretend to be green when they are brazenly toxic or businesses who spend huge sums promoting their connection to a cause and little on the cause itself.  Of course I have found myself rolling my eyes more than once at yet another cause marketing campaign such as Exxon Mobile’s mosquito net commercials during the Olympics.  I have also come across a website, Think Before You Pink, that calls out “pinkwashing,” or companies that are attached to breast cancer cause marketing and actually contribute to the disease they’re supposed to be fighting against.”

Okay, Okay.  So while cause marketing isn’t 100 percent positive, I still lean towards “good.” I guess my attitude is…it doesn’t hurt to try.  I think it’s good to see companies doing something outside their own bottom line, and if it helps contribute to the bottom line in the process, right on.  So even if the motivation is selfish, as “Selfish Giving” infers, it’s still giving, and I think we need to take everything we can get.

I think Marré states it best in his blog, “When I get close to many of my clients’ motives, what I am finding is a genuine movement toward social good.  What may have started as sponsorship or don’t-want-to-get-my-hands-dirty philanthropy is rapidly transforming to well-funded business innovation…Cause marketing is a Trojan horse to get inside the strategic walls and retake the intellectual power of business leadership.”

Cause Marketing is the First Step in a More Virtuous Business World

Today everyone is trying to stand out. But just spending money on being famous is foolish. Marketing guru, Seth Godin in his TED speech, Seth Godin on standing out discusses how marketing must be remarkable.

He states, “The thing that’s going to decide what gets talked about, what gets done, what gets changed, what gets purchased, what gets built, is – is it remarkable?” He goes on to say that remarkable does not just mean neat, but it also means worth making a remark about. Increasingly what people notice is how much good a business does.

I think some cause marketing campaigns are indeed that, remarkable. If done properly, they benefit everyone involved. The for-profit creates a buzz about their product and recruits new customers who are aligned with the cause, and the non-profit gets wider attention and needed funding to support their efforts. For cause marketing to be truly remarkable, it has to be authentic. It has to represent the soul of the company that supports the cause.

A perfect example is Nike’s and Lance Armstrong’s Livestrong campaign that has generated $63 million for cancer research and programs and has since expanded to include an entire line of products in which 100 percent of the profits go directly to the Lance Armstrong Foundation. I was recently at Nike doing a workshop for their executives and I was impressed at how broadly and deeply Livestrong had impacted their brand, their culture and the visibility of the need to beat cancer.

Other great examples of cause marketing include Product Red in which over $130 million has been raised for the Global Fund to fight AIDS in Africa, and Pampers and UNICEF who donate one tetanus vaccine per pack of Pampers sold and have already given 50 million vaccines and hope to reach their goal of 200 million over the next three years. Now that’s something worth talking about. Pretty remarkable.

In my professional work I often speak about the power of authentic cause marketing when the cause perfectly aligns with the brand and taps the six sources of brand energy: physical, emotional, mental, social, spiritual, and emotional. These six sources of energy separate brands we care about versus brands that are just famous. Consider your own energy when comparing Nike with Reebok. This doesn’t mean that Nike is good and Reebok is bad. But Nike’s mojo has been transformed since the mid-nineties sweatshop scandals to a company that is trying to help the world get fit, healthy and excellent and has scores of engineers trying to figure out how to have greener, leaner products, and much of that vibe has been accelerated by programs like Livestrong.

(For more on the subject read Author Will Marré Says Nike’s Livestrong Campaign is Compelling Case of Why Businesses Worldwide Should Adopt Cause Marketing Today).

Of course there is a lot of fake cause marketing going on, companies that pretend to be green when they are brazenly toxic or businesses who spend huge sums promoting their connection to a cause and little on the cause itself. Of course I have found myself rolling my eyes more than once at yet another cause marketing campaign such as Exxon Mobile’s mosquito net commercials during the Olympics. I have also come across a website, Think Before You Pink, that calls out “pinkwashing,” or companies that are attached to breast cancer cause marketing and actually contribute to the disease they’re supposed to be fighting against.

But when I get close to many of my clients’ motives, what I am finding is a genuine movement toward social good. What may have started as sponsorship or don’t-want-to-get-my-hands-dirty philanthropy is rapidly transforming to well-funded business innovation. For instance, Apples’ decision to market their products greenness has motivated their designers and engineers to go for more radical and responsible solutions to e-waste. Wal-mart’s efforts at recycling and waste reduction have helped save them gobs of money and spread best practice compliance with their suppliers. And just last week Exxon-Mobile announced their serious investment in bio-fuel development. 300 million smackers in promoting algae-based fuel. I know, we’ll see. But anything is possible.

Undoubtedly some cause marketing is dumb and counterproductive, but what I see happening is that marketing message is getting through to many of the sponsoring companies’ own employees and leaders. And they become a new generation of internal innovators creating new business solutions that turn cause marketing into a cause business strategy. Making sustainable profit by creating a sustainable world.

What’s the best thing we can do? Support the causes and companies that do the most good for the issues you feel strongly about. Contact the cause sponsor companies. Ask tough questions. Ask them to do more. The business revolution we need to create a sustainable future is being driven by consumers and employees. Cause marketing is a Trojan horse to get inside the strategic walls and retake the intellectual power of business leadership.

So what do you think? Is cause marketing a hoax or a needed step in the evolution of business to benefit humanity?

Giving and Getting

There is a lot of compassion boiling under the surface of our own fears about the future.  Staggering rates of unemployment, foreclosures and job insecurity have reduced direct charitable giving over the past six months.  But increasingly polls report we feel guilty about not doing more to help both our neighbors and strangers with their suffering.

That social compassion is upping the payoff of cause marketing, when retailers give a specific percentage of their revenue to charities consumers approve of.  In a recent test using average consumers by Cone Marketing, people exposed to cause related retail ads bought more of the brands engaged in a cause than products that only touted themselves.  One shampoo jacked up sales 74% by linking with a cause.  It works if done right.

But most businesses are too indirect or too quiet about their cause supporting contributions to be noticed.  Few Target shoppers are aware that Target has been donating a whopping 5 percent of its net income since 1942 mostly to local schools.  They are considered the gold standard of retail giving, but who knows it?  Target’s in good company with others like Macy’s, Kroger and Wal-Mart that do a lot but engage us little.  It’s a shame.  In tough times when our wallets are flat it would be great to know that at least part of what we do spend goes to the United Way, Make-A-Wish or a local school.  It would make us all feel a little better.