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Category Archives: Causes

More web 2.0 sites popping up around “cause”

Posted on May 27, 2008 in Causes, Social Entreprenuers

I just stopped by one of my favorite cause related marketing blogs…aptly titled Cause-Related Marketing.  Paul Jones does a great job of covering cause related marketing campaigns.  I suggest you check out his blog.

Today, Paul talks about some cool new cause related web 2.0 sites that could use a little network effect love.  So, I am doing my part to link to the them this evening…go on over and check them out.

Good2gether: This is a very interesting idea (my favorite of the 3) led by serial entrepreneur Greg McHale.  Currently, many of the 1.5 million non-profit websites out there don’t get much traffic & suffer from a lack of awareness…Greg is trying to solve this issue via a widget provided to media outlets (e.g. newspapers). When a story pops up around a crisis event (e.g. Chinese earthquakes) the widget will provide links to local nonprofit resources helping to battle the issue.  If a user clicks on a link, they are directed to a page where they can get more info about the non-profit…cool idea, I will put Good2gether on my watch list

Just Cause:  A “social networking with a purpose site”.  JUST CAUSE is an integrated media property with a  national print magazine, an interactive online community site, and community events.   I am a big fan of Good Magazine and its online site + print pub…it seems Just Cause will try to differentiate via the creation of community & a more local focus.

uPlej: In Paul’s words, a fundraising company that uses the power of a networked downline to raise money for charities.

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Cannes and “faux cause” campaigns

Posted on May 22, 2008 in Causes

I am back after dropping down to the south of France and the Ligurian region of Italy for a short break.  While stopping over in Cannes to check out the scene at the 08 film festival with my family, I happened upon a couple of cause related campaigns out on the streets.  One ad in particular caught my attention as I strolled down the beach…a large billboard asking for a 1 Euro donation to support the search for missing journalists in Iraq.  Turns out that the ad was merely a ploy to promote a new French movie called Envoyés très spéciaux.  Thanks goes to Michael Jones from the Variety blog “The Circuit” for pointing this out.  Click here to check out his post and the (in)famous billboard.  Michael calls the ad “rather tasteless”.

Another cause activity out on the street was a UNICEF auction for a “star studded” autographed car.  Here I am having a look at the names on the car…

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Are Marketers becoming more like Politicians?

Posted on May 11, 2008 in Causes, Marketing

In a recent AdvertisingAge article called: For Unilever, P&G, No Good Deed Is Going Unpunished Jack Neff quotes Howard Rubenstein as saying:

[the] confluence of marketing and politics that shows no signs of abating, with marketers tracking online buzz and other measures of public opinion as doggedly as politicians track polls He goes on to say…high-profile marketers are in the political arena to stay, whether they want to or not.

Indeed, the rise in social responsibility + the rise in social media (& the ability to track it) does seem to = a challenging new world order type mix for companies. As for those working in Brand Management (e.g. people like me who lead R&D, PR, sales, finance, and creative agencies etc.) it becomes more and more critical to surround yourself with fantastic, forward thinking PR/marketing to help navigate these new waters. Certainly, there is little room for error in this brave new world. And even great ideas that drive wonderful causes can easily go wrong as public opinion can now shift on a dime. It is one thing to be able to track the conversation, but an entirely new thing to react quickly once it starts going into an entirely unintended direction. Side Note: I do hope the current raging greenwashing debates do not discourage companies from leveraging “Good” going forward.

So who volunteers for the job of brand pollster? There might be some positions opening up soon… :-)

Check out this good post from What Do you Stand For? commenting on the AdAge article:

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Asking hard questions on the weekend…

Posted on May 10, 2008 in Causes, Randomness

There are many things that we would throw away if we were not afraid that others might pick them up. –Oscar Wilde

Closets full of clothes and basements full of stuff…but we still buy more & lag when it comes to giving. Oscar Wilde’s quote made me laugh…and then think. So as a follow-up to my “sufficiency” article a couple of days ago, I am asking myself a couple of hard questions on giving this weekend.

One hard thing to reconcile as a marketer is balancing the need for growth with sustainability. Consumer spending makes our economy move and we definitely depend on it more than ever. But over-spending is an epidemic in the US (click here for the numbers). How can we give more when we are in over our heads in debt? One way to reign in all of the spending (read greed) would be to see a surge in lifestyle change combined with giving. On the giving side, according to Intelligent Giving the avg. person from the US gives roughly 2.0% of their income to charity. This is anemic, but when compared to Brits (1.0%) and the French (0.1%) Americans seem quite generous. There are encouraging signs of an upsurge in philanthropy and giving over the past few years as influential celebs like Bono and Bill Clinton have made it a focus. Bill and Melinda Gates have demonstrated amazing examples of giving.

Maybe we should shift our mindset the next time someone comes up and asks for a donation…all to often our response is: I don’t have the cash, so I better not. But if we are honest this lack of cash has not stopped us from over-spending when a purchase is for us & benefits our own world. Indeed, we don’t let the fact that we “just don’t have the cash” stop us from upgrading our lifestyle though we may not have the means…so we need to ask ourselves if acquisition and upgrading does, in fact, = our life (wouldn’t this be sad). I am challenging myself to get more creative & find bigger ways to give…even when “I don’t have the cash.”

Note: Andy Stanley influenced the closing paragraph.


Here is a good recent blog post on the state of philanthropy from tactical philanthropy

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New Social Network for Causes: Make the Difference Network

Posted on May 5, 2008 in Causes

I just saw a new social network for causes called Make the Difference Network. The aim of the network is to leverage social networks to help non-profits extend their message. MTDN leverages celebrity influencers in a big way. There is even a celebrity tab across the top toolbar…MTDN was co-founded by a celebrity as well–actress Jessica Biel.

I will try to check out the site more. It will be interesting to watch how the team swings into action to promote the site.

If you want the full back story on how the site really came to fruition, check out Kent McBride.net Kent seems to be very well-versed in the online “how to” marketing world.

Great to see even more celebs out there promoting good cause stuff!

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Friendly challenge to Tom Peters…In Search of Eco-Boomers

Posted on May 4, 2008 in Causes, Randomness

As Boomer consumers head into retirement everyone knows they are going to present a huge market opportunity. In a recent blog post called I Do Love you Lee…BUT, Tom Peters noted:

“We (BOOMERS) are the fastest growing, the biggest, the wealthiest, the boldest, the most (yes) ambitious, the most experimental & exploratory, the most different, the most indulgent, the most difficult & demanding, the most service & experience obsessed, the most vigorous, (the least vigorous,) the most health conscious, the most female, the most profoundly important commercial market in the history of the world—and we will be the Center of your universe for the next twenty-five years. We have arrived!”

Tom also goes on to say that pretty much everybody is doing a horrible job serving the boomer consumer. In his words:

Here is my current report card on the market’s (manufacturers, retailers, designers, marketers, product and service developers) effort to understand and encompass and exploit this Incredible-Humongous Expanding Market Opportunity:
Awful.
Dumb.
Disgraceful.
Insane.
Stupid.
Pitiful.
Embarrassing

So, OK Tom the gauntlet is thrown. You have issued a challenge. Agreed, companies do need to wake up a bit more to this huge opportunity, though ironically many of the companies you are referring to are themselves probably run by Boomers.

I would argue that in fact many big companies do work very hard to understand consumers. A recent book by A.G. Lafley (P&G’s CEO) outlines the “Consumer i Read More »

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Facebook saves? Tapestries of Hope & Micro interactions

Posted on May 1, 2008 in Causes

When Michaelene Risley, the producer/director of Tapestries of Hope was facing the prospect of jail time in Zimbabwe for attempting to produce a documentary about the rape and sexual abuse of small girls, a member of their facebook group called Silent Bravery - Women of Africa contacted a CIA friend who had the connections to get her out. Amazing how micro interactions across social networks can make such a difference. These little connections can really do big things. Check out this great post by David Armano on the brave new world we live in today. Michaelene and her team are continuing to use all the levers of social media to raise awareness for this very worthy cause…I found out about them while listening to this Stanford podcast. You can also check out their blog .

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When telling both sides of the story doesn’t help…+ “we can solve it” marketing

Posted on April 24, 2008 in Causes, Marketing

Balanced coverage - telling both sides of the story - is widely considered one of the pillars of professional journalism. However, when applied to global warming, telling both sides of the story doesn’t help. 

Global warming is still being discussed in the news media.  Sadly, the discussion is all too often about whether or not global warming even exists. Scientists, however, do not discuss global warming. For them it is a fact.  This begs the question…do reporters (for the most part in the US) do a bad job when writing about global warming?  Indeed, they do try to follow the journalistic standard of objectivity…objectivity in the media requires that both sides are equally heard.  In the case of global warming, journalists talk to scientists and those who deny global warming.  The two sides of the issue are being heard, but the result is not better reporting in this case. The result is confusion. After choosing 928 articles from the journal of Science published over a period of 10 years, Geologist Naomi Oreskes did not discover one article that disagreed with the assertion that human activity causes global warming.  Jules and Maxwell Boykoff also analyzed the articles of four leading U.S. newspapers over 14 years. They reviewed 3542 articles in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times on global warming.  For their analysis they chose randomly 636 articles. In 2004 they published their results: About 53 % of the articles gave equal weight to the opposing side  - which provided opinions that were often funded by the oil & gas industry - creating an impression in the minds of readers that there was a debate about global warming. 

In case you have not yet seen the new ads for the wecansolveit campaign (funded by The Alliance for Climate ProtectionI love how they have done a spoof on Apples Mac vs. Windows (check it out below).  I have not yet seen or heard much of the marketing campaign over here in Euroland, so the focus seems to be squarely on the US for the moment…this makes sense strategically as the US is still the worlds biggest polluter.  From Al Gore’s blog it seems that the marketing campaign is pretty standard, mixing in TV, print, online, etc. The campaign appears to be on the right track with over a million people signing up to help get climate change under control.   I would encourage you to go sign up…

Below is Al Sharpton vs Pat Robertson (who is the Mac? ) 

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Are you a Corporate Athlete? + Earth Day

Posted on April 22, 2008 in Causes, Randomness

Every now and then go away, even briefly. Have a little relaxation, for when you come back to your work, your judgment will be surer. To remain constantly at work will cause you to lose power –Leonardo da Vinci

Today, I was in P&G’s corporate athlete training. This training grew out of some work done with Jim Loehr, author of several books like The Power of Full Engagement, and founder of the world famous Human Performance Institute in Orlando, Florida. The idea of this book (and a big part of the training) is that you should focus on managing your energy vs managing time…what resonated with me as a former track & field Division I athlete were the “life hack” ideas around balancing your energy expenditure with strategic recovery during the day (kind of like interval training).

Earth Day: Morgan Clendaniel on Good magazine’s blog wraps-up the Earth Day 2008 events. Mr. Magazine talks about how TIME Magazine, for the second time in its 85-year history, left its red border behind in favor of the green border to celebrate Earth Day and the war on global warming. Joel Makower on Two Steps Forward takes us through a slew of new surveys & concludes that the data is mixed on whether or not consumers are really changing their habits in favor of green products. He does note that sustainability buzz abounds and only continues to grow (up 50% vs. last year). Reuters notes that this year’s Earth Day has a decidedly more Corporate & Political Feel…from the P&G side, we had several events internally around Earth Day today on the Geneva campus. I took off at lunch during Corp. athlete training to support the booth for our Bike to Work initiative. To raise awareness about the initiative, I even made a bit of a spectacle of myself by driving a Pringles branded bike through the hallways…telling people to sign-up (upsetting our facilities manager a little bit–but delighting the Sustainability team). I might even be brave enough to add a picture with the bike to this post later. Another activity we supported was that all the food in our lunch room was supplied from local Swiss providers. I could go on about the range of activities happening (there are a lot)…all this to agree with the Reuters article and say that indeed, corporates are getting much more involved in Earth Day.

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Amazon’s associates; Geneva’s spectacular small library; Room to Read

Posted on April 20, 2008 in Causes, Geneva, Social Entreprenuers

Yesterday I was playing with Amazon widgets and stumbled across the Amazon.com Associates Program. As far as I understand the program, bloggers can refer their traffic to Amazon and if a purchase is made from the referral, then the blogger gets to pocket a small %. When you join the program, you can choose to receive the money via 1) gift cert. 2) direct deposit or 3) check. I joined the program via gift cert. and will be donating 50% of every sale generated from this site to the excellent Room to Read charity via a gift in kind. Room to Read was established by John Wood, the guy who left Microsoft to Change the world. John’s social entrepreneurship story is fantastic & he is responsible for the establishment of around 5100 libraries worldwide–highly recommend you check out his book. Mitch Joel interviewed John here.

All this talk about libraries, reading and Amazon got my wife and I over to see one of the best private libraries in the world on a cloudy Geneva Sun. (no more rain, please). Over in a small, super wealthy part of town, the Fondation Martin Bodmer holds some of the world’s literary treasures…like a copy of the Gutenberg Bible.

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