When Jaimeson Rossow went trick-or-treating in Northfield, MN, last Halloween, she carried a plastic pumpkin to collect candy, and a small orange box to collect pocket change. The first-grader practiced her line for days beforehand, shouting, “Trick or Treat for Unicef.” Throughout the neighborhood, Baby Boomers manning candy bowls all responded with the same surprise: “I haven’t seen those boxes since grade school!”
The box is back, thanks to a combination of social consciousness, corporate support, and rampant nostalgia. Unicef has big plans for the box’s 5Oth anniversary in 2000, and is hunting for partners. The Orange Box has become a brand in itself, one that stands for “a child’s first volunteer experience,” as basketball star Anfernee “Penny” Hardaway put it while taping Unicef’s 1998 public service announcement.
As we wrap up the altruistic ’90s, cause marketing has proven to be a permanent fixture in marketing strategy. Short-term promotions have given way to long-term alliances with occasional promotional bumps. There will always be the one-off holiday tie-ins; after all, consumers pay more attention at Christmastime. But savvy companies are using cause marketing year-round to build brand equity and strengthen relationships with consumers, employees, and other stakeholders.
“It all goes back to the question: What do you stand for? That’s what consumers and employees want to know,” says Carol Cone, president of cause marketing consultancy Cone Communications, Boston. “Consumers are saying short-term promotions are nice, but we really want long-term relationships.”
In fact, 77 percent of U.S. consumers want companies to commit to a specific cause for a long time, rather than conduct short promos with several causes, according to the 1999 Cone/Roper Cause-Related Marketing Report. That’s up from 66 percent in ’93, the first year the study was conducted. The Cone/Roper report also found that 83 percent of Americans have a more positive image of a company that supports a cause they care about. That jumps to 86 percent of consumers with household income over $50,000, and 94 percent of “Influentials” – the 20 million Americans defined by Roper as those who influence their social circles.
North American companies will spend $630 million on cause sponsorships this year, up 16 percent from $544 million in ’98, according to sponsorship consultancy IEG in Chicago. Cause sponsorship will be 8.3 percent of the $7.6 billion marketers will spend on all sponsorships in North America this year, up from 8 percent last year, IEG reports.
“Cause marketing continues to grow because companies want to stand out, and having a social overlay to marketing campaigns has proven an effective way to do that,” says Lance Helgeson, managing editor of IEG’s newsletter Sponsorship Report.
“Companies want a signature program so their brand equals X with consumers,” Cone says. “They want an intangible, a thing that can’t be copied like product and price.”
The consumer incentive has become pretty standard: Use my brand and I’ll make a donation on your behalf. Some campaigns add perks like a sweepstakes or, with United Airlines’ two-month-old College Plus program, frequent flier miles. Increasingly, marketers are letting consumers choose who gets their donations, like Target Stores’ Fund Raising Made Simple campaign that lets shoppers donate 1 percent of purchases to the schools of their choice. Online marketer iGive.com lets consumers choose which charity gets a percentage from their Web site purchases.
Another new avenue for cause promotions is volunteerism, on the rise among teens and adults. That opens the door for a new kind of promotion – rewarding consumers who donate their time with free product. United’s College Plus VolunteerMiles gives college students 5,000 frequent-flier miles for every 50 hours they volunteer for United’s six nonprofits through partner America’s Promise – The Alliance for Youth, headed by Gen. Colin Powell. The program could prompt 1 million volunteer hours, and bring as many as 10,000 college students into United’s Mileage Plus loyalty program.
Sexy enough to sell Savvy marketers will continue to take their cues from consumers, whose biggest hot buttons are still “kids, kids, kids, the environment, and kids,” Cone says. Some causes, like breast cancer, are “not passe, but eminently cluttered,” Cone says. Others may not be sexy enough to lure sponsors, nonprofit execs worry. “Nonsense,” Cone replies. “It’s the nonprofit’s job to find the appropriate alignment for its cause. Knowing which brands fit the issue is part of the nonprofit’s homework.”
Brands get a halo from nonprofits they sponsor, but these days marketers are looking for something else, too. “Companies want arms and legs for execution, and that’s something nonprofits can offer,” Cone says.
So what’s hot right now? Education, help for the hungry, and self-esteem are center stage, with a tie-in or two for world peace on the side.
U.S. Committe for Unicef, New York, is hunting for a cadre of sponsors as it gears up for Trick or Treat’s 50th anniversary in 2000. The nonprofit is “relaunching the brand” with the first marketing program in decades, says Lisa Fielding, Unicef’s director of Trick or Treat. Its ’98 partners are on board, including Turner Network Television and Warner Bros., and Unicef is courting candy, cereal, and telecommunications marketers. “We want a key partner in every category,” Fielding says. “We’re not looking for outright money. We want strategic partnerships where we get support and give something in return.”
Most partners sign because someone in the office Trick-or-Treated as a kid and feels a strong connection to the program. TNT president Brad Siegel is a case in point: His fond memories prompted $2 million in support from TNT, including pro bono production and airing of public service announcements starring Hardaway, actress Sarah Jessica Parker, and the stars of the ’70s hit show CHiPs.
Warner Bros. hosted Halloween parties in its Studio Stores in 11 markets to spark awareness and hand out boxes. Unicef passed out 2 million boxes in ’98 – double its reach for ’97, when it raised $2.25 million. Still, that’s only one-eighth the revenue Trick or Treat generated at its height in the early ’70s. Unicef “didn’t promote it well, and participation gradually declined,” Fielding explains. With trick-or-treating back in vogue and nostalgia blooming, the stage is set for aggressive marketing.
Education and e-shopping Simon Property Group established the Simon Youth Foundation in August, with plans to build Education Resource Centers in Simon-owned malls. Simon will spend $500,000 over three years to set up centers where teens can work on earning high school diplomas and get job training in retail sales and management. That gives students career skills and mall tenants a pool of potential employees.
To run the in-mall learning centers, Indianapolis-based Simon teamed with Communities in Schools, a stay-in-school network of 125 local and 16 state programs that tap community resources for school kids. The nonprofit finds teachers, mentors, and counselors for centers, and works with local school superintendents to choose students for the program. Simon opened its first center in Pittsburgh last year, and plans to add four centers this year. Each curriculum will be tailored to local needs, and centers can house education programs during off-hours.
Target Stores has won awards and parent loyalty with its School Fund Raising Made Simple campaign, part of the company’s cause-marketing umbrella, dubbed Take Charge of Education. Target wanted to get more shoppers using its Target Guest Card credit card, so it took on school fundraisers, a subject near (but not always dear) to the hearts of its core shoppers, moms 25-to-54. Moms sick of selling candy for the school band make donations via the credit card instead. Every time a shopper charges on the card, Target donates 1 percent of the purchases to the school specified by the shopper. Schools register with Target to be eligible for donations, and get a free voicemail system to keep parents and teachers in touch, along with ongoing info about Target’s education programs. In its first year, Target signed 78,000 schools, 68 percent of all schools in its trading area at the time. Not only has the number of cardholders jumped 20 percent, but new cardholders are spending four times as much and visiting stores twice as often as average cardholders. The program has reinforced Target’s image as a local benefactor, even as it approaches 1,000 stores this year.
The voicemail overlay was tested in five markets last year. Schools that registered to receive cardholder donations also got the voicemail system, called Target School Connection. Each teacher had a 24-hour-a-day mailbox to give out homework assignments and get parents’ messages; general mailboxes gave info on sports, lunch menus, school holidays, and the like. More than 1,800 schools serving 1 million kids signed up during the test.
Target’s parent, Minneapolis-based Dayton-Hudson Corp., gives 5 percent of taxable income to nonprofits, more than any other retailer. Grants totaled $46 million in 1997. In recent years, donations were scattered across too many causes, so Target narrowed its focus to education, family, and the arts.
Sponsoring self-esteem In November, Procter & Gamble and Nike kicked off a joint program to build girls’ self esteem. Dubbed Helping Girls Become Strong Women, the effort began with a Nov. 13 symposium in San Jose, CA, and the Nike Four in the Fall women’s college preseason basketball tournament presented by P&G’s Secret antiperspirant. The day-long symposium hosted 250 seventh-grade girls and their mothers or mentors for sessions on relationships, body image, stress, and goal-setting, as well as presentations from professional athletes, performers, and doctors.
The partners plan more symposia for ’99, hosted by Nike and Secret, which did sampling and signage at the San Jose event. An essay contest, The Secret to Self-Esteem, awards scholarship money and features winners in Seventeen and Ladies’ Home Journal. Those magazines conducted an online survey that found 50 percent of the 1,100 girls polled feel depressed at least once a week, and nearly 50 percent are unhappy with their appearance. About 40 percent said they’re struggling in school, and more than 30 percent don’t have a strong adult role model.
“We wanted to reach consumers in a way that was good for them, something that went beyond product benefits to the brand equity of feminine strength,” says P&G spokeswoman Elizabeth Moore. “It’s about what the brand stands for, not just about keeping your armpits dry.”
Secret’s marketing team spoke with its counterparts at Nike to see how the two could tap their equity in feminine strength. They asked the Partnership for Women’s Health at Columbia University to study the issue and develop guidelines for girls, parents, and mentors on building girls’ self-esteem. “We’re marketers, not child development experts,” Moore says. “We needed the Partnership to find the right panel of experts for us.”
Such efforts targeting young women will become more popular as marketers soften their sales pitch to girls. Advice-driven campaigns may blunt criticism of ads that set unrealistic standards for girls, winning loyalty from moms and girls alike.
“We couldn’t have done this if it weren’t a good marketing opportunity,” Moore adds. “We couldn’t have convinced the company to put the money into it.”
Grocers against hunger Kraft Foods gave its $57 million corporate ad campaign a cause overlay for the holidays and brought grocers in under its halo. Kraft ran a TV spot nationally that featured actual food bank recipients and broadcast the phone number of Second Harvest National Food Bank Network. Then Kraft offered retailers an innovative co-op ad deal: The food company made a donation to a local food bank on behalf of the grocer, then ran TV spots tagged with the grocer’s message. J. Brown/LMC Group, Stamford, CT, customized the national spot created by Kraft’s ad agency, J. Walter Thompson, Chicago.
Kraft won’t say whether it funded the campaign with trade dollars, or how many retailers signed up, but the company did give $500,000 to Second Harvest during the holidays, and “met its expectations” on signing retailers, says Kelly Cunningham, director of corporate promotions and co-marketing. In all, Kraft donated $1 million-plus to Second Harvest in ’98 as part of a long-standing alliance.
“We looked at how we could build an account-specific campaign out of our relationship with Second Harvest while leveraging our [corporate] equity campaign,” Cunningham says. “We’ve had success with co-op TV before on brand-specific campaigns. This is the first time we took it across our entire portfolio.”
Kraft supported the holiday campaign with a Family Get-Together sweepstakes awarding five trips on Amtrak family sleeper cars. A November FSI offered discounts on Amtrak with the purchase of Kraft products.
To celebrate the anniversary of its reformulated French fries – introduced last January with the Free FryDay sampling blitz – Burger King tapped its top French fry supplier, McCain Foods, to donate 150,000 pounds of potatoes to Second Harvest, which distributes them through 188 regional food banks.
BK began soliciting donations for Second Harvest in 1996, when the fast-feeder encouraged its 400 suppliers and distributors to donate surplus food in the pipeline to Second Harvest. BK’s own donations totaled 100,000 pounds; suppliers pitched in another 300,000 pounds that would have gone to waste, according to Second Harvest.
Pepsi and world peace Pepsi-Cola Co. played Santa in Bosnia this year, bringing Pepsi One samples and a Remember the Troops sweepstakes to commissaries serving the 10,000 U.S. military personnel stationed there. Soldiers got a chance to taste Pepsi One and enter the sweeps to win one of five trips home, or one of 1,000 AT&T phone cards worth $10 to call home. Pepsi made sure the airline tickets had a lengthy time frame so winners could coordinate trips with leave time. “The military does have rules, and the winners have to play by the rules,” says Pepsi spokesman Dave DeCecco.
Pepsi worked with Army Air Force Exchange Service, a logistics group, to coordinate the campaign. All sampling was done in commissaries – some housed in permanent buildings, others in tents. P-O-P supported the sweeps.
“The military has been important to us over the years, ever since Pepsi hosted lounge areas during World War II, and up until we did Operation Desert Soda [passing out Pepsis to troops] during Desert Storm,” says DeCecco.
Nice guys finish first more and more these days. In fact, Jaimeson, the first grader, collected nearly $20 for Unicef – and a stash of Snickers bars for herself.
Like their bricks-and-mortar colleagues, online retailers are using cause overlays to drive traffic. One advantage of the Internet is that shoppers can choose their own charities.
One site, iGive.com (formerly eyeGive.com), calls it “technogiving.” Launched in 1997, iGive.com lets shoppers donate as much as 12.5 percent of purchases made through the site to the charity they choose, from a national nonprofit to a local shelter. Shoppers register at the site, then get a personalized page with a mix of ads and offers from 15 marketers like etoys.com and J. Crew. Purchase-based donations average 8 percent. In addition, half of ad revenues on each personalized page go to that shopper’s charity of choice. (The other half is iGive.com revenue.)
The Evanston, IL, and San Fransisco-based company claims click-through rates average 34 percent. It has signed nearly 35,000 members and raised $227 million for 3,500 causes – and raked in another $227 million in revenues. “We’re proud to say we’re a for-profit company,” says spokeswoman Allison Clark. “We bring Internet benefits to non-profit organizations.”
Short-term cause tie-ins abound online. The Internet Travel Network (www.itn.net) is running a Travel with CARE promotion supporting the overseas efforts of CARE. Through Feb. 28, itn.net will donate 50 cents for every airline ticket, rental car, and hotel stay bought on its site. The travel site’s link with a global relief organization is “important and logical,” ceo Dick Whilden said in a December statement announcing the promotion.
A consortium of online marketers have linked www.theCatalog.com to the Muscular Dystrophy Association, donating 5 percent of holiday sales for research. The nine retailers include OmahaSteaks.com and FTD.com; partners Citibank and Transactor Networks created a cyber wallet for shoppers to track purchases.
In Seattle, a handful of online companies banded together to launch www.directdonation.org to raise money for Katie, a second grader with bone marrow cancer. The site was coordinated by Dan Fine, ceo of Internet consultancy Fine.com International, whose daughter is in Katie’s class. Partners include Microsoft Corp., Lycos Inc., and Paylinx Corp. Donations go into a trust fund administered by Holy Rosary Church, Edmonds, WA. There’s no marketing twist – the site is strictly for donations – but the effort gives a halo to the marketing companies involved.
In its first two weeks, directdonation.org collected $1,950 in checks, three offers for prosthetic legs for Katie, a 1977 Dodge Van, and groceries from a travel agency and a group of Harley riders. Microsoft put a link on its own Web site. “It’s a pretty good start,” says Fine. The New York ad agency veteran opened his Seattle shop in 1994. Offices in Washington D.C., London, New Jersey, and Tokyo serve clients including General Electric, Marriott, Intel, Microsoft, and Fuji Film.
The goal is to raise $500,000 for Katie’s family, then feature another child with cancer.
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