A New York car dealer puts an ad in The New York Times offering to tithe a certain amount per every sale to the victims of Hurricane Katrina. A small manufacturer issues a press release pledging to give $1 for each case of its products sold through the end of the year. Such donations aren’t uncommon following a major disaster. But are they really charity or just a cynical sort of marketing?
That depends, says the head of a marketing company that relies heavily on current trends to advise clients such as Wells Fargo and the Ladies Professional Golfers’ Association.
The gamble is that the public will think “you’re trying to take a horrific human tragedy and turn it into a promotion,” cautions Erik Hauser, founder of the San Francisco-based Swivel Media. “Let’s say you’re a company in great standing with the American public and everyone loves you and you have not had any corporate scandals, someone like Home Depot. If Home Depot does it, it’s not seen as really self-serving; it shows good corporate citizenship.”
But, he adds, companies whose hold on the public’s good graces is a bit more tenuous face a risk of appearing self-serving. “If you have Wal-Mart – a lot of people are anti-Wal-Mart. It’s a little bit risky for them,” Hauser says. And it could be downright detrimental for a firm like Enron; consumers would read its motives entirely in the negative.
What if you’re a small business trying to help by tying contributions to sales? Issuing a press release or running an ad touting your actions could backfire, Hauser says. Instead of calling attention to their generosity, he suggests that companies might be better off giving employees a week off to volunteer in the Gulf Coast.
“You saw Sean Penn out there in a dinghy raff. He really cares. He takes a lot of heat, but no one could criticize that,” Hauser says.
Companies that publicize their charitable efforts counter that doing so encourages other people to help out. But Hauser, who will lead two workshops on branding at next month’s PROMO Marketing Conference & Expo in Chicago (the expo, like CHIEF MARKETER, is owned by Primedia Business Magazines & Media), advises companies that want the public to know about their gifts to do it subtly. Instead of sending out a release, he suggests calling up a favorite reporter or two and let them decide if there was a good story to be told.
“You don’t want to shout from the mountaintops,” Hauser says.
