What is Cause-Marketing?
If you haven’t the heard the term being used recently, you’ve probably been exposed to cause-marketing campaigns of various sorts.
Recently, Ford announced that “from April 22 to June 1, Ford will donate $20 [to Susan G. Komen for the Cure] for each Ford, Mercury or Lincoln vehicle test driven at a Ford dealership – up to $1 million.” Ford has been a long time supporter of this popular and important cause, having donated over $100 million to breast cancer education and awareness since 1995.
The Ford campaign is a classic example of cause-marketing, whereby donation incentive is employed to instigate a desired action, while creating a positive brand impression AND hopefully driving immediate conversion.
Though criticized in some publications for its lack of donor conversion, the Facebook Causes application is a landmark social media donation platform. It has consistently been one of the most popular Facebook applications for the last year -an impressive feat, considering there are over 50,000 applications available.
The beauty of Causes is that it enables individual charities to create their own awareness-raising and fundraising mini social networks. It also allows users to create their own cause-based groups, with donations going to specified legitimate charities. For instance, “Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster” by a guy named Jack, has raised $651 for Americans United for Separation of Church and State, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit.
It has also been used as a cause-marketing platform for Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream. During the Obama campaign, Ben and Jerry’s promoted an ice cream called “Yes, Pecan!” by supporting Common Cause , an organization dedicated to making US government more open, honest and accountable. Within a relatively short time frame, around 20,000 users signed up, over $11,000 was donated to the nonprofit directly through the group, while Ben and Jerry’s donated $1 for every new member who joined the Common Cause network.
Social Vibe is another interesting tool, which enables social network users such as “MatthewLush” to post a “badge” on his/her social network profile. The badges contain a charity endorsement as well as consumer product advertising. Quarterly, Social Vibe donates unspecified amounts to charities, based on the number of ad impressions received. In this case, the active users are leveraged as publishers, while the passive users (for instance, friends of the Social Vibe participant) are the source of the impressions.
Social Vibe is a good example of Cause Media at work. Advertisers pay for the number of potential views their ad may have received, based on all the participating users’ page views. The active users are incentivized to publish the advertisements, based on a) showing their support to charities, and b) the fact that some donation (though unspecified) will be directed to the organization. What makes this more of a SIM platform than a cause-marketing initiative, is that direct participant action is not required for the donations to be triggered. Social Vibe has successfully created a system whereby ad views are due -at least in part- to some association with social investment.
As you will see in future blog posts, the association of attention media with charitable support is a powerful brand building tool, despite what cynics might say. Social Vibe, (and surely many others to follow) are onto something important. As Joe Marchese (CEO of Social Vibe), states “We are in the first inning of the social media’s impact on the evolution of CSR…”