USA TODAY Polls Pink Campaign Shoppers

Just as when the Holidays roll around every year you can be sure to see the red and green everywhere, it is a sure bet that in October you will see pink all over the marketplace. Yes, another October has come rolling around and more and more businesses are getting on the pink ribbon bandwagon helping promote breast cancer awareness and  research. But research findings have addressed the many questions that many of us have asked as to whether the pink campaign has gone too far and whether it has proven worthwhile. A recent Gallup Poll in USA Today bears some good news about the pink campaign in that it has raised awareness of the cause and has brought in contributions. 

The ensuing article in USA TODAY, however, points out that with all the hoopla and additional funding there has been little advance in finding a cure for the disease and questions remain whether the intense focus on this one cause detracts from other causes just as worthy. 

No one has yet studied, as far as I can tell, whether the pink campaign has provided retailers with an additional boost in sales. Presumably the industry thinks so, unless of course, the campaigns are done out of altruism. 

Benevity Helping Create Customer and Employee Giving Programs That Really Engage

I had the pleasure of talking with Jana Taylor, marketing manager for Benevity, a certified BCorp, that has developed a software platform that helps businesses better engage their customers, employees and corporate partners in cause marketing and charitable giving. More recently, Benevity has also built another product, Spark which actively engages and tracks employee giving programs. Jana and all of the Benevity employees are passionate about how Benevity can help businesses achieve newer and more effective corporate giving and cause marketing programs.

Part I is a transcript of my interview with Jana which describes Benevity, its beginnings, and the vision for what it can do for the world of corporate giving and philanthropy. We will continue in Part II about the newer product, Spark, aimed at improving employee giving.

INNOVATIVE CORPORATE PHILANTHROPY PROGRAMS 
We do a lot of things at Benevity helping businesses with corporate philanthropy, cause marketing initiatives, as well as employee volunteering initiatives where we have built a particular product called Spark. We are very interested in the whole concept of engaging employees in corporate philanthropy. We have been around for three years now. We are very passionate about helping companies with their corporate giving programs and helping them to do things differently.

We represent ourselves as a hybrid company in that we are a software company and a for profit company, but we have a social mission to help philanthropy and to give businesses a new perspective from the technology perspective to be shown how to implement their corporate giving programs in new and innovative ways.

THE BEGINNINGS

This is not just for the purpose of being new but also for the purpose of to be able to generate better returns both for the social impact and enabling greater contributions to the communities so that when they what to give back. But also from a business perspective, whether it is cause marketing or a giving initiative or an employee giving program, to really have a new technology to better help them measure the impact of that as well. Initially it has been an area that is becoming more important but also an area that as has been getting more scrutiny and we see it as having importance, because people are caring about giving back more and if you look at the research that we got from the Cone and the Edelman reports, whether it is on the consumer side or the employee side, people are thinking more than ever about giving back. So that is a change and the change in the companies in how they have to give back.

The founder is Bryan de Lottinville .He was not an original IT person but a lawyer. He basically was involved in a growth company as an executive. What prompted him was that he really wanted not to leave a legacy of just fixing companies , he was motivated to do more and when he was working as an advisor for a company that was looking at turning consumer loyalty programs into donor programs that's when he started thinking about cause marketing and philanthropy. He was looking at the perspective from his experience at IStock Photo, which was a company that had a very strong online community and really revolutionized and democratized that industry.

IMPROVING THE CORPORATE PHILANTHROPY LANDSCAPE

Soon when he was looking at corporate philanthropy he was looking at it from that lens. When he looked at the philanthropic landscape he saw so many problems such as the duplication in not for profit and the high cost of fund raising and the small percentage of donations that come from companies. As for democratizing philanthropy, it's great that there are giving plans and high net-worth individuals , but what about the person who can give only twenty dollars or two dollars and they don't the opportunity to make them feel that they've made a difference and how to build giving into the business.

That was the idea behind the Benevity platform. basically it is an engine that is embedded into individual transactions so that from a company's perspective they can engage consumers or employees in optimal charity of choice giving that under their brand.

CREATING A BRAND HALO EFFECT

Everyone here is very passionate about the idea of helping companies do this better, putting an 'x' through "that is how we have always done this " corporate giving programs and that includes cause marketing and employee giving programs. And giving them a way to do this differently and specially giving them a way to support charities and at the same to engage their employees and consumers in giving. Because one of the things that we also feel is needed is that, is in addition to where people are caring more about giving back , they are living in a world where personalization and empowerment and customization. Everyone has a profile in Facebook and Linked in and everyone knows that they can go online and order a custom made shoes from Nike.com, people are used to this world of personal empowerment. In addition to the fact that they lived in this web based world, they want to give back more and the ways that companies have been traditionally been them ways to give back,they are not really engaging them anymore. From the company's perspective, in addition to wanting to be a good corporate citizen, it is not completely altruistic. They also, with cause marketing, are also doing this because they want to engage their customers. They know they can create a brand halo effect.

What we are seeing is that there are so many ways for companies to do things better. The traditional cause marketing program where you have one company and one it really isn't engaging anymore.

IMPROVING THE CUSTOMER GIVING EXPERIENCE

 I noticed in a consumer article that on the consumer side there is almost a skepticism, you see that increase prevalent in cause marketing. Yet you see the Cone and the Edelman reports that people want more cause marketing offers that are not satisfying. For example I went into a drugstore and they asked me if I wanted to donate to AIDS and I asked if the company was matching the donations and the employee didn't know. Which is too bad for her but which is also bad for the company.

We look at programs like that and we say, what if you gave your customers the ability to donate to their cause of choice, so if you want to donate to retailers X charity of one type or another charity they will match your donation.

And what if you could create your own personal foundation where these are the five charity that you or someone else cares about, instead of loyalty points you could redeem them for a donation to your charity. Those are the kinds of things that you could do from a cause marketing front with the Benevity platform.

HELPING COMPANIES DO THINGS DIFFERENTLY

Those are the kinds of things we are trying to help companies to do things differently.

Our platform is used in a number of different ways. It can be used in cause marketing initiatives, with e-commerce initiatives, with web based initiatives. Then we are starting to build products on top of our platform, specifically for workplace giving.

So when we went to companies to ask them about building the platform when it came to employee giving they told us that they want a pleasant solution. They didn't just want us to build the engine for the car they want us to build the engine.

So from the consumer side, if the company is using our platform they have a way to embed cause marketing into offers in a more flexible way. It enables them to embed a cause element into a product price, you buy this particular product x percentage goes to a particular charity of choice and by the way if you donate to a certain fund we will match that.Because it enables you to add optional charitable giving into your business model, you can then measure the impact of that . You can also track this and do an AB test, you can offer this product with a caused offer over a product without a cause offer you can then do a test. Or what if you do a cause with the company choosing cause versus the consumer choosing the cause.

GETTING EVIDENCE

What companies have told us is that it gets the community investment or their corporate philanthropy closer to their target. In the past the CEO is standing there with the big check and hoping that the word will get out. If you are doing cause marketing and if you are doing community investment, and you can get your customer involved in a matching program, then basically know whether it is effective or not. As a company we support, as an example let's say the environment, you can see whether it is compelling or not . Likewise instead if writing a big check to an environmental charity you can have a web based offer that if the consumer gives to that fund we will match that. You get the evidence whether one campaign is more compelling than the other.

Ahold USA's Cause Marketing Hits Triple Winner

Ahold Hits Another 'Triple'

By Maggie Shea

Ahold USA's Stop & Shop and Giant-Landover chains kicked off their annual "Triple Winner" cause marketing program in April.
The campaign, which raises funds for pediatric cancer research, enlists the participation of numerous brands and is promoted extensively in stores. (See "Ahold Chains Spring ..." in Related Articles.) The program benefits The Jimmy Fund/Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Johns Hopkins Sidney Cancer Center, the Children's Cancer Foundation and Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.
This year's effort again leverages Stop & Shop's sponsorship of Major League Baseball's Boston Red Sox and Giant's similar pact with the Baltimore Orioles, while adding the New York Yankees to the mix for Stop & Shop's Metro New York stores. From April 15 through July 14, shoppers who donate $1 at checkout receive a scratch-off game ticket awarding instant prizes ranging from $10,000 (to two winners) to $2 (to 12,000); store gift cards in denominations of $20, $10 and $5 (9,125 in total); and free product from more than 200 participating brands.
The participating brands are identified at-shelf with special tags bearing the "Triple Winner" logo. The lengthy lineup includes Procter & Gamble's Olay; Kimberly-Clark's Kotex; Clorox Co.'s Glad; Campbell Soup Co.'s Campbell's; Nestlé's Edy's and Purina; ConAgra Foods' Marie Callender's; Boehringer Ingelheim's Zantac; PepsiCo's Gatorade and Lipton; and Johnson & Johnson's Aveeno.
For at least the sixth straight year, Nestlé's Edy's Grand provided a special overlay to the program. The ice cream brand joined with Stop & Shop in the New York area for a day of in-store product sampling, and also pledged five cents from each sale of three select SKUs from April 15 through June 9 to Memorial Sloan-Kettering.
In addition to ceiling banners, stanchion signs and other P-O-P materials, promotion for the campaign includes circular features and home-page leaderboard ads.
Stop & Shop has been staging the "Triple Winner" program since 1991. (See "Stop & Shop Stages Jimmy Fund Drive.") Giant-Landover adopted it in 1995.

Subway Restaurants Take a Bite Out of Hunger

The Subway restaurants chain's community project has taken on the cause of two social issues: hunger and obesity, with  a unique marketing campaign Fit to Fight Hunger. Nearly 1600 restaurants in California, Hawaii and Utah will be participating in this piggyback type campaign, hoping to raise awareness for the rising needs of local food banks, while also promoting their low fat Subway Fresh Fit sandwiches and encouraging customers to make healthier eating choices.

This marketing campaign will be run in these three states with advertising in broadcast and print media and on their website, You Tube and Facebook. Fit to Fight Hunger provides information with some of the harsh statistics of hunger in the communities along with a listing of the food banks that they are supporting with their donation of over $100,000.00. There is an invitation to customers to join Subway in fighting hunger by supporting any of the 20 local food banks listed with donations of food, money, and time.

Here's what I liked about this campaign-

Subway does not tie-in buying their sandwiches with their donations to the cause. This makes their donation to the food banks philanthropic and not based on any surge of customer spending.

While their intentions are to market their healthy line of sandwiches, they are piggybacking their advertising dollars to spread the word about the cause and to create awareness for the food banks.

There purpose seems truly to be to educate and inspire customers to join them in helping the
cause by providing information about locations of local food banks.

There is no mention of which Subways are participating and which are not, so there is no perceived self interest of tying-in sales to their giving.

On the other hand- I have been to several of the restaurants this last week and have seen no mention of the Fit to Fight Hunger campaign, which means they are not directly reaching the customers. I wonder whether Subway could do more to help to promote this cause within their restaurants. While on the website they invite others to join them in fighting hunger, they do not provide any additional support for the customer to become involved other than their invitation. Finally, there is no way to assess the impact of the campaign on increasing donations to food banks. Ads are great but often forgotten.

Subway seems to be trying to makes this as clean cut a cause marketing program as possible
without mingling motives, an often problematic issue in cause marketing.

Besides, just the fight against obesity by providing low fat, yet delicious fast food is to be applauded.












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Cause Marketing for Your Cause First , You Second

Cause Marketing has been booming and along with it has come some criticism and objections to using it as selfish self promotion rather than as an opportunity to give back to a favorite cause, to the point of even suggesting that it is "dead". But there are many examples of companies that  have been exemplary in representing a true giving partnership.  Joe Waters of Selfish Giving, defined cause marketing as: "a partnership between a non-profit and a for-profit for mutual profit", to which he has added several categories amongst which includes: message promotion.

But whose message? One would think the partnership would be one of somewhat  balanced messages about the cause and the business that is giving back the cause. Here are examples of cause marketing via message promotion that  puts the charity squarely in the forefront and outweighs the time allotted to the for-profit's message.

I spend a lot of time in my car, as many Californians do, where I first heard what was presumably another ad on the news station. It sounded more like a public service piece, the kind when stations offer free air time to charities. This ad provided information about the plight of foster children in our local communities. A foster child spoke about the challenges they face on a daily basis, and the kind of the support that they need for their well being. For the longest time there was no mention of any business associated with this ad, this was for most part a campaign to build  awareness for this cause. I knew which company was sponsoring this as I had  featured Sleep Train on this blog last year.
Towards the end Sleep Train did make known their sponsorship, by requesting that customers help support their program for foster children with their donation of shoes, clothing, backpacks and other necessary items at their participating stores. They also directed listeners to find out more about foster children on their link on the Sleep Train website.
No mention of mattresses, or of their stores, no sales pitch or special offers. Only at the end you heard their recognizable little jingle and the toot-toot.

Another ad I heard not too long ago began in a similar way, putting the cause first. The president of the Peninsula Humane Society talked about the work they do to help save stray and forgotten animals. Towards the end, the sponsoring company Pet Food Express mentioned their ongoing support of this organization with funding, volunteering and in-kind donations of pet food and supplies.You can check out on their giving back page other causes they support.


It's expensive to pay for media advertising, ( I know, I used to sell advertising space). As a result it is rare to hear and learn about local charities and causes on radio. They cannot afford to pay for this kind of  marketing. By sponsoring media ads for the charities, businesses have give back to the cause the great gift of increasing awareness and presumably generating more donations to the cause.

Yes, the business gets a bit of the air time for the brief mention of their name.  But the most positive thing they that have received out this partnership is a great big "Toot-toot" and hurrah, for giving the cause the opportunity for promoting their important message.

PLEASE DON'T GIVE- Public Radio's Humorous Fundraising "unPitch" With Alec Baldwin

Time to get serious, it's my local public radio's pledge drive again. And during last year's drive I wrote about the impact of business sponsorship in matching dollar for dollar pledges. Studies have shown that indeed a business that matches pledges dollar for dollar, increases donations during the time period of that offer. It is an excellent strategy for a business to get publicity for themselves, especially in a market where there are no other opportunities to advertise, while at the same time giving back to a worthy cause.

Usually I change the channel, not wanting to listen to the dull, same old, same old appeal. But this year, while driving, I heard the voice of one of my favorite comedic actors, Alec Baldwin, with a pledge message that went something like this:

Hello, this is Alec Baldwin from television, you know television, the dominant broadcast medium of our age.
.
I have come here to public radio, during your sad little pledge drive with a simple message: don’t give.
Public Radio,with its' lack of hot buxom starlets, its’ deluded sense of seriousness, its’ pathetic faith that ideas still matter, it has no place in today’s current landscape of media.

Let's return all radio to its proper mission, selling advertising and making money.

So please –this pledge drive-DON’T GIVE…
Let Public Radio sputter and die a slow death….

Do nothing, do not call, do not give online.
Help me destroy public radio.
Here is someone to give you instructions on how to pledge-which you should ignore.

If you want to hear the entirety of this hilarious pitch, you can listen to it courtesy of  public radio station KPIU

So did this work? Using myself as a test case, I didn't stop the car and pull out my cell phone to dial their number and make a pledge. But I also, for once, did not change the channel.  I stayed on for awhile longer when they jumped right in with their more serious pledge drive format. 

Following this hilarious pitch came the serious pitches: an oriental rug store that was matching dollar for dollar every pledge within the next 25 minutes, and the proverbial raffle where for an "x" amount of donation you might get a chance to win a technological gadget.

We know that matching dollars works as a fundraising strategy and probably the raffles also attract donations to some extent. But I haven't been able to find any research on whether using humor works for fundraising.  

My response to the humorous approach of this appeal was that it kept me listening long enough to hear about the matching grant and more importantly ( from the business's perspective) the name and location of the business that was offering it.

If I were a business considering supporting public radio with a matching grant, I would think it a good giving strategy to have my public support follow right after Alec Baldwin's hilarious "unpitch".
At least I would know people are still listening.

P.S. Kudos to Public Radio for their idea to use Alec Baldwin as a result of this Saturday Night Live skit.

http://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/nprs-delicious-dish-schweddy-balls/2846/

Business Doing Better at Doing Good- 2011 Trends in Business Philanthropy

The month of January is named after the god Janus, the god with two heads, one looking behind and one looking forward. Apparently the god Saturn, gave Janus the introspective ability to see into the past and the gift of seeing into the future. I can make no claims of having god-like abilities, but in reviewing the past year's stories and tweets, it seems that there is trend is to find newer and better ways for business to do good.

And these are the trends I see that will be significant in the year of 2011 for creating positive new directions in business philanthropy.

Using the Social Sciences to Understand the Dynamics of Giving Behavior

More and more studies in social psychology and behavioral economics have been addressing the question of what motivates people to give. Businesses hoping to use cause marketing and to engage their customers in giving, and non-profits seeking to find ways to get more value from their corporate sponsorships should tap into these research studies more. Take for example, the recent study about amusement park goers who paid more for their photos on a ride when they could choose their own price and the profits went to charity. Sceptics of the Panera Cares Business Model, (we profiled their first cafe opening, St Louis Bread Company Cares) which is an example of this kind of approach, should check out the video on CBS News.
For more research studies on consumer giving behavior check out: Ways Your Company Can Give More Bang For the Buck.

CSR's Umbrella


Last year I predicted that Cause Marketing and Corporate Giving would become more differentiated. Well I was wrong. The lines have gotten even blurrier between CSR, Employee Volunteerism, EVP, Cause Marketing and Corporate Giving. Is it more that they are distinctions or that they justifiably fall under the CSR umbrella? More and people cite all of these in the context of each other and often interchangeably. Beth Kanter suggests in her blog post.Corporate Altruism: The Blurring of the Lines Between CSR and Cause Marketing that perhaps the lines do not distinguish one fore another but that it is more of a continuum. CSR this past year has been struggling with finding a definition of itself, but more than being a continuum, I like the image of an overencompassing arc, like that of an umbrella..

Employee Drive Philanthropy


Yahoo employees do it, Blackbaud's employees do it and GiveSomethingBack's employees do it: various forms of employees recommending charities; designing the giving programs often in forms such as competitions,scholarships; sitting on the grants committee; and other forms of direct emplyee involvement.
Employers are seeing that when giving back to the community is a company grassroots effort, not only is there more by-in from the employees, more total giving in time and money, but also more loyalty given back to the company.

Skills Based Volunteering 

While providing extra hands for bagging food or assembling backpacks will never go away as an important function of Employee Volunteer Programs, more meaningful ways for employees to help communities are
emerging.  Bea Boccalandri of the BCCCC, has been advocating that businesses create more of these kinds of asset based opportunities for employees volunteering as a way for companies to provide their employees with more engaging and rewarding experiences that help build the capacity of the non-profit organization  in more sustainable ways. Skills based volunteering also serves as great employee training opportunities for the companies involved. Her suggestions may seem radical, and so she acknowledges that these changes need to be small at first and that both types of volunteering can co-exist. And she cites examples of companies like Aetna and Hasbro and Levis that have been doing so.


Directed Giving Through Voting and Liking

Using social media to involve the public in making the decision for a company's giving is going to get bigger and bigger. It's an approach that appeals to many as it can engage thousands in feeling that they can contribute in some small way by voting for their favorite charity or "liking" a facebook page, that results in an award or donation given by a business to the winner. Witness the Pepsi Refresh Project, (which I mentioned in last year's trends picks, The Classy Awards, (where two of our featured businesses, Sweets Trucks and GiveSomethingBack were finalists, and the American Express Small Business Day, where just a vote on a  website or a Facebook "like", brought about large corporate funding towards specific projects and causes.

More Public Scrutiny

As businesses will continue to involve the public in their giving programs, so will the public be more involved in the judgment of corporate giving. Witness the outcry over the Punk Buckets for a Cure, BOBS Shoes and Target's funding of political campaign. While some of the public will want to be more included in corporate giving, others like Michael Hiltzik of the LA Times (who gave us a cool shout out) may want to be left alone to their own philanthropy.
Whatever a company does, you can be sure the public will be watching to make sure that a company's giving is neither insincere, nor causing harm in any way other way, nor just plain dumb.

New Forms of Philanthropic Business Models 

While many were dubious of Panera's business model, more and businesses are coming up with innovative philanthropic business models. Even staid Nordstrom is planning to open a philanthropic department store in Manhattan with all profits going to charity. We have seen the B corp becoming recognized as a legal entity in several more states. Several forms of "buy one give one" business models, and more businesses like Panera with "set your own pricing schemes" have sprung up.
It is possible, of course, that some of these innovative philanthropic businesses will fail, but perhaps at no higher rate no than other start ups. And if so, so be it,  innovation requires taking taking on the risks of failure, but also the rewards of success and of leading the way in developing a whole new sector.


In spite of what I consider my one missed prediction for 2010, I think that last year's predictions, which you can read here, have proven to hold up and will grow to have even more importance in 2011. Business giving in partnership with consumers, non-profits and communities, will be evolving and will create better solutions to local and global problems.


I look forward to bringing more of these stories here in 2011.










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Macy's Newest Cause Marketing Miracle on 34th St.

Not since the movie " A Miracle On 34th St" a 1947 movie where the existence of a Macy's Santa was proven by the submission in court of  50,000  letters to Santa, and "Yes, Virginia, There is a Santa" 1897 editorial , has there been better proof that there is someone out there that will grant children's wishes.

For every letter to Santa delivered Macy's has given $1.00 to Make A Wish Foundation an organization that grants wishes to children who are face life threatening illnesses.

Macy's has set up a Believe post office like stations at all their stores nationwide, as well as a website where letters can be written and decorated to be printed up and brought to stations.   

Now practical parents,Scrooges, Grinches and cause marketing cynics as well, must be cringing at this strategy of taking advantage and even furthering childrens' beliefs in Santa as a ploy to bring in customers.


But I am sucker for such causes like Make A Wish Foundation; and for myths like tooth fairies and Santas, and I always cry when I watch movies "The Miracle on 34th Street". As a mom I know the pain and heartbreak of having a child injured or sick, as well as the joys and delight of children at Christmas time.

To date Macy's has received 1,001,002  letters. This campaign has translated to Macy's delivering a $1,000,000.00 check to Make A Wish Foundation, with an additional $500,000.00 from their facebook promotion- proving once again that kids' letters to Santa must mean that somewhere out there he does exist -and so does charitable giving tied in with some brilliant cause marketing.

If Macy's can help me "believe" that that there is "someone out there" that can give some joy and hope to children with life threatening illnesses, then I truly hope that Macy's wish for profitable season has been granted too.

B1G1 – Global Giving Partnering Businesses With Charities

Buy One Give One (BOGO) is the home of transaction-based giving.

STOP. Take a breath. And imagine you were part of a world where every single transaction made a difference.

Imagine, for a moment, you purchased a television, and automatically a cataract-blind person got the gift of sight. Automatically. Or imagine if today you purchased a cup of coffee and someone in Africa got access to clean, pure drinking water as a direct result. Again automatically.

It’s all happening right now. Already Buy1GIVE1 (Buy1/Give1) has become a true global giving ‘village’, bringing together businesses, their customers and worthy causes in a way that’s never been done before.

It’s happening globally, every second, every day and in every way with a staggering 556 projects already underway and making a difference.

That’s because in the Buy1GIVE1 world, every single sales transaction, be it buying a cup of coffee in Cape Town or renting a car in Reno (and everything in between) gives back in a well-defined, resonant and measurable way.

In this present economy, when both corporations and charities have seen a decrease in profits and donations, cause-related marketing appears to really be catching on. Cause-related marketing is a business scheme involving a partnership between a company with a product to sell and a charity with a cause to advance. As opposed to “corporate philanthropy,” which simply involves a company making a tax-deductible charitable donation, cause-related marketing benefits both the company (by helping to increase sales, and thus, profits), and the charity (by giving contributions and calling attention to the cause.)

You buy a book, a tree gets planted. You dine out, a child is fed. Buy One Give One – simple. The list is endless and the giving simply happens automatically, every second, every day and in every way.

And it is beautifully simple. Buy1GIVE1 is now becoming a global movement as more and more businesses jump on board and enjoy the incredible benefits of transaction based giving.

In Buy1GIVE1, they made sure that in all cases, the consumers are not only involved in CSR initiatives on a daily basis. Buy1-Give1 generates answers to that and it does it every second, every day and in every way.

Discover more about how Buy1GIVE1 (BOGO) can transform your business using Cause Marketing.

This article, B1G1 – Global Giving Partnering Businesses With Charities has free reprint rights.


Article From Articles Cafe

Black and White and Pink All Over

I admit it! I love women's magazines, and love to look at the latest fashions and read tips on how to live my my best life. So I pick up the latest O Magazine around Sept 20th, with Oprah in her hot pink outfit on the cover and I leaf through this issue fairly rapidly. Guess there wasn't that much that caught my interest. But after I finished, I had a strange image of the entire magazine as one big pink blur from cover to cover. Going back through the magazine my impression was verified with the images of pink clothing and lipstick interspersed with pages and pages of  pink ads promoting breast cancer awareness and research. So okay, October is coming up, which is National Breast Cancer Month and this was the October issue of  "O", but the odd thing was that for all the pink advertising there was not a single mention of  the specially dedicated month in any of the editorial pages.

Here are the companies and their ads in support of helping prevent and cure breast cancer.

Hanes Company and their support for the Susan B Komen's Pink For The Cure
Warrior in Pink, by Ford Motor company
Breast Cancer Research Foundation sponsored by Kmart
 "Shop Till You Stop Breast Cancer" page about products that contribute a portion of sales to support research, detection and treatment.
Ralph Lauren, Pink Pony
Vera Bradley with a note about their 10 million dollar contribution to breast cancer research

And to  "O" Magazine's credit, they ran a story about the latest advances on breast cancer research with a cover page of hundreds of female figurines standing  in a pink colored shape of a ribbon.
 
That's quite a lot of pink advertising-maybe not enough to provide the necessary resources to knock out a real killer of a disease. But as a consumer the effect of all this pink advertising interspersed with a lot of pink color on the fashion  pages, destroyed any impact that any one ad could have had on me. After my first skim through the magazine, not one company nor one non-profit stood out in my memory.

I applaud these companies like Ralph Lauren and others, doing whatever they can to help fight breast cancer, and I believe that "O" Magazine's intentions were to help promote this cause by having a such a pink colored issue. I would have preferred a little more thought to what the effects of creating this pink blur might have and a little more information about how to help beat breast cancer.

For more information on how you or your business can help support this cause in October, check out the site for the National Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

Businesses Promote Give Back to School Shopping

Businesses are hoping to involve the customer in tried and true methods of collecting everything from dollar donations for school lunch programs, such as Whole Foods' latest initiative, their partnership with the saladbar project , to donating towards backpacks for needy children through Staples’ latest philanthropic effort, StaplesGive-Backpack.

Other businesses have kicked off back to school shopping campaigns with what they describe as “pay back” programs that are designated for support of local schools.Large and small retail businesses and consumer products companies, all across this country, are hoping this back to school shopping season will be a good one, and that makes them all the more interested in attracting customers, mostly the parents of these school kids, by getting them involved in raising money for their local schools through their purchases.

Although some cynics may consider this just a another cause marketing ploy, many of these companies have a very strong corporate commitment to supporting schools in other ways and see the “give back” programs as being in alignment with their overall strategic giving plan that is implemented throughout the entire school year.
Here listed below are some large and small businesses that are seeking ways to support schools with their “buy and give back” programs.

Target

Take Charge of Education® is a school fundraising program: Target credit-card holders can designate up to 1 percent of their card purchases to the K-12 school of their choice. To have advantage of this program, visit. At present, more than 102,000 schools and more than 3.5 million Target customers participate in the program. Celebrating its 10-year milestone this year, Target has donated more than $200 million to participating schools since the program's inception. Launched in 2006, the Target Field Trip Grants Program helps educators bring learning to life through the distribution of field trip grants. In the program's first year, nearly $800,000 was awarded to 800 educators across the country. Parents, in association with their schools, can apply for the program online.

General Mills

We all shop for groceries, sometimes two or three times a week –- or more. Now turn those shopping trip into easy cash for your school, and encourage friends to do the same! Just look for the Box Tops logo on hundreds of products like Cheerios®, Hamburger Helper® and Kleenex®, in almost every aisle of the store. All you need to do is clip and send them to your school’s Box Tops coordinator —- each one is worth 10¢ for your school.

Safeway Inc.

One of the largest corporate supporters of education, giving more than $20 million to schools and education programs each year.
This week Safeway launched its 6th Annual 10% Goes Back to Schools program, a special in-store initiative that unites over 150 food manufacturers in support of education and students throughout the United States.
Through the 10% Goes Back to Schools program, which runs through September 14, 2010, Safeway is partnering with food manufacturers to donate 10 percent of the sale price of more than 2,300 selected products to local schools designated by customers.

Office Depot

This unique cash-back program for schools can not only benefit your child's school now, but help keep them in free supplies all year long. All you need to do is make a qualifying purchase at Office Depot and present your school's 5% Back to Schools program ID - and we'll take care of the rest.

It’s not just the big stores and large companies that help cusotmers shop and give back to local schools. Just in my backyard, there is an independent bookstore, (yes, one of a rare breed) where they donate 10% of purchase to a shopper’s designated school; a local Chamber of Commerce that created a Shop Local program with a collaborative of twenty businesses that give back a percentage of sales to the local schools for supplies; a candy store that gives all proceeds of sales to the local school; and a clothing boutique that gives five percent back to the local elementary school if the customer lives in that school’s district.

There are dozen's of ways any sized business can come up with ways to involve their customers with support of their local schools, school children, and education. Finding there is a need is easy. One just needs to take a ride on the school bus around the corner.

Cause Marketing: Conveying a Message That Makes You Smile

Everyone knows that a good commercial that makes people laugh does more for brand recognition and sales than a dull serious one. Well, just as I am getting over a serious attack of seriousness, thinking about philanthropy killing Africa and all, I can always count on a good friend, Christina McClure, who is heading up a TEDxYouth conference in my area, to write or post something on her TEDxCastilleja site, that just lifts me right up. 

Silly me, I didn't get it til the very end. The comments say it is touching, others think it's hilarious. I think it's all of those things, but more. Kudos to a brilliant piece which conveys a worthwhile  message.
See for yourself- watch the whole thing-