Cause Marketing

Right now DNA II, a custom art company believe it or not, would like you to kiss off. When you do they’ll make a donation to the MAC Aids Fund; enough to purchase 1000 condoms for distribution in India or 14 HIV test kits in Haiti . Here’s how it works. You purchase one of DNA II’s KISS Portraits online, which start at $290 USD for a 51cm X 51cm (20”x20”) canvas print. They send you a tube of MAC Viva Glam lipstick and a bunch of KISS image sheets. You return the sheet you prefer and a few weeks later you get a portrait of your lips on a canvas suitable for hanging in the colors you specified. DNA II, which operates out of Ottawa , Ontario , Canada and sells worldwide, started by selling portraits of your DNA. They send you a cheek swab they turn into a colorized version of the lines biologists use to designate your DNA. They also sell a fingerprint… um … print that they blow-up from your... er ... fingerprints. Baked into the DNA of the company's corporate culture is c

In today’s rocky economy it may be small businesses that have may have the most to gain from integrating cause marketing into their marketing efforts. For purposes of definition, cause marketing is a relationship that bridges commerce and cause in a way that benefits both parties.   Cause marketing has been shown to improve sales, brand and increase customer loyalty. It can help a company stand out from competitors and improve employee recruiting and retention. And it does several and sometimes all these things while helping a cause. Cause marketing is like red wine. It feels good and it’s good for you. Here then are ‘7 Tips to Turbocharge Your Small Business Marketing With Cause Marketing.’ Pick an appropriate cause. Consider not only a cause’s appeal, but its capacity to support your effort. It may be that the best cause marketing fit for your small business may be a small charity. Weigh the option of weaving cause marketing into your overall business strategy. General Mills’

There’s a handful of stories out there about the successful use of Twitter in nonprofit fundraising. Social media expert Beth Kanter has been especially watchful of this trend. The most common technique is to simply spell out the need in a Tweet to the people who follow you on Twitter. Just last night in my little market organizers of the 'SunTweet for Charity' tried something I haven’t seen elsewhere. They held a Tweetup for charity in conjunction with the Sundance Film Festival . A Tweetup is a meetup for Twitterers. SunTweet for Charity  featured panelists on the topic of ‘creating value for your social audience,’ free pizza and soda drinks, a cash bar and face-to-face social interaction. The price of admission was $5, which went to an unnamed charity. Event costs were covered by sponsors. I love events   for charities. Like very few other tactical media choices events can help move prospects from interest to action. And Tweetups happen because even the most distant

This post is endorsed by 'President Barack Obama,' 'Oprah Winfrey,' 'Hillary Clinton,' 'Coldplay' and other high-ranking search terms in Google. The hope-filled inauguration of President Barack Obama yesterday morning means that 2009 is still dewy enough that we can talk about New Year’s resolutions. Professionally I set a series of goals each year including sales and profitability goals. I’ve also set a grand total of one professional New Year’s resolution. I resolve to spend more time evangelizing the advantages and benefits of cause marketing.  In the past I have contented myself to talk about the many positives of cause marketing with clients and on this blog. The blog is easy to find if you know the word ‘cause marketing.’ But not that many people know the expression or the ideas behind it. Google’s keyword search tool says that in December 2008 the search volume for the term cause marketing was 14,800 with another 4,400 for the search ter

In every bad cause marketing campaigns, ads and research I’ve autopsied this year I’ve tried to find something to praise. This is in stark contrast to the postmortems they do on all those CSI-style dramas that air on TV nearly nonstop in the States these days. You’d never hear this dialogue on any of those shows: “How did he die, doc?” “Well, he ate a high fiber diet that kept his blood cholesterol in a very healthy range. And it looks like he had the resting heart rate of Tour de France champion. But I’d say it was the bullet to his heart that killed him.” But in the interest of fairness, I tried to do just that in 2008. Right now, though, in the interest of brevity, I'm just going to be snarky. I couldn’t believe the little ad I saw in Cookie magazine for a fundraiser for startup charity called  Cookies for Kids Cancer . The headline read: “But a Cookie, Save a Life.” As I wrote then, “my reaction was, ‘Oh no they just didn’t!’ The ad was one of seven on a single page; the

First off the usual disclaimers. This is by no mean an exhaustive list. I don’t see much cause marketing from outside North America . I read and speak only English; and, well, a smattering of Esperanto ;). There may well be… and probably is… some brilliant cause marketing coming out of Senegal or Bengal or Finland or Vietnam or Rio de Janeiro that I just don’t know about. I certainly don’t even see all the cause marketing done in North America . I only post about cause marketing about twice a week. So needless to say, I don’t review all the cause marketing that comes over the transom. There can be no doubt but that I have blind spots. But I did review a lot of cause marketing in 2008… more than 135 posts… and I saw much more than that. So with that said, here’s the best 11 cause marketing efforts of 2008 (as far as I know). In January I was besotted by TOMS Shoes ‘buy one, give one’ (BOGO) campaign. Buy a pair of their alpergatas shoes and they give away a pair to a needy ch

To get into Harvard, jewelry designer Joan Hornig made a deal not with the devil, but with her better angels : if she got in, she told herself, by the time she was 50 she would give away all her earnings to charity. She does just that with her eponymous jewelry line sold on her website and at retail outlets like Bergdorf Goodman. Like other ‘ all benefits ’ companies, 100 percent of her profits… year-round… are donated to charity. When you purchase it online, you designate where you’d like the donation to go. Hornig also does exclusive lines for retailers that benefit predetermined charities. For instance the earrings above are from her Snowflake line at Bergdorf, which benefited UNICEF.  Hornig's jewelry is priced in the ‘if you gotta ask, you can’t afford it’ range. It goes without saying that not everyone could manage this. Town & Country  magazine reports that Hornig is independently wealthy. But the appeal to would-be consumers is mighty. How easy it would be

Capri Sun, the Kraft Foods brand that packages portable juice drinks in those aluminum-polyethylene pouches has teamed with TerraCycle , the innovative recycler, that promises to keep juice pouches out of the waste stream, while paying schools $0.02 cents per pouch. [Oops. My bad. That makes it seem like Kraft is actually doing some work here when in fact all the heavy lifting is being done by TerraCycle. That said, Kraft probably paid for this ad in Cookie magazine (and elsewhere) and the attending promotional and PR efforts.] Here’s how it works. You sign up at TerraCycle and they will send your school four bags. Each bag holds 100 pouches. Fill 'em up and they'll send you more. TerraCycle pays $0.02 cents for each Capri Sun, Honest Kids and Kool Aid pouches. All other pouches pay $0.01 cents per pouch. TerraCycle pays twice a year. In turn, TerraCycle ‘upcycles’ (their term) the pouches into backpacks, totes and pencil cases. While the materials that comprise the

CA, the $4.3 billion (sales) software company has an interesting cause marketing campaign going right now benefiting the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) that is kind of a head scratcher.  The campaign… which features celebrity crime fighter John Walsh … centers around CA’s Internet Security Suite Plus 2009 and Internet Security Suite 2009, both of which carry a premium price in a competitive market . When you buy either product CA makes a $1 donation to NCMEC. Customers may also elect to donate all or part of the rebate they receive to NCMEC when they buy the product. The pertinent CA webpage also runs a ‘ crawl ’ of the names of people who have donated their rebate to NCMEC. It’s an interesting tactic, borrowed from telethons . I’d love to hear what feedback they get on this. At the top of the page they also list the amount of money generated for NCMEC. The amount listed when I visited on Jan 2, 2009 was $462,586, which includes $375,000 in in-kin