Don’t Forget Men in Cause Marketing

The 2010 PRWeek/Barkley PR Cause Survey was just released with a male-centric headline. Men, the survey discovered, are just as likely to support cause marketing programs as women.

Though a handful of brands have directly or indirectly targeted men in their cause efforts, they are in the minority. This means there is a significant opportunity to engage a demographic that is highly invested – and interested – in supporting cause efforts, finds this year’s PRWeek/Barkley PR Cause Survey. For the first time, this year’s study polled 536 men about their attitudes toward cause marketing, in addition to 79 marketers about their companies’ cause marketing programs. Of those surveyed this year, 88% believe it’s important for companies to support a cause, compared to the 91% of women that responded the same way in last year’s survey.

I understand it’s the job of publicists to make news by teasing out a surprising angle in a study like this, but what surprises me most is that it took a national survey to find that men also connect on a deeper personal level with companies that are good citizens.

Sure, men and women may relate to different kinds of issues or causes based on their own gendered experience. And they may have different reasons for supporting a given cause.

But it has never been my experience as a marketer (and, well, as a human) that only women are interested in brands exhibiting a higher level of social consciousness.

Sure, if you brand a cause with the color pink then men will get that they are not being “targeted” and will tune out. But pink does not equal purpose. Promoting a brand’s core values cuts across gender. The desire of people to live with a deeper sense of purpose — a purpose motive — is not gendered. It’s a universal pursuit.

This is only breaking news to those who don’t understand the real power of cause marketing: uniting people with a common sense of purpose.

Supporting a cause as citizens — and as consumers — can lift us all up to the level of humanity.

-Matthew DiGirolamo, Cause Catalysts
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Is Apple Anti-Social?

In the days leading up to Apple’s press conference last week, this video of a shorts and sandals-wearing Steve Jobs (circa ’97) introducing the Think Different campaign went viral. Perhaps the appropriate term is that it went bacterial. It was a fairly local outbreak. In a span of three days, I saw it appear on at least six different blogs I read regularly.

It really is a terrific look back at a company on the verge of reinventing itself — and a valuable primer on branding from a natural marketer. Jobs make three key points in this video:

1. “Marketing is about values…”

2. “Apple, at the core – its core value — is that we believe that people with passion can change the world for the better…”

3. “Values, core values, shouldn’t change…”

And so I ask: Has Apple changed its core values since this remarkable moment?

In 1997, Jobs articulated a radically progressive worldview. Under his leadership, Apple’s “soul” would be about empowering bold, creative, revolutionary people to “change things” and “push the human race forward”.

It seems to me, Jobs wanted to position Apple as a brand that offered a positive definition of freedom — a freedom to. To create. To take risks. To change the status quo. To mix it up. To blaze a trail. To be yourself. It was all about positive freedom.  All outward looking.

Success hasn’t been kind to this early vision, though.

The now infamous late night email exchange between Gawker’s Ryan Tate and an unfiltered Steve Jobs revealed how much of the CEO’s worldview has shifted since Apple’s underdog days.

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Choosing Customers: “The night, too, is for sport”

After reading Seth Godin’s short blog on the subject a couple of weeks ago, I’ve been thinking about the extent to which brands choose their customers.

His take was that we can choose the customers we desire, the audiences we want to associate with.

Yes, you get to choose them, not the other way around. You choose them with your pricing, your content, your promotion, your outreach and your product line.

I watched this Puma ad (hat tip @GuidoWongolini) with that lens on. According to Creative Review, the ad was created by Droga5 and directed by Ringan Ledwidge.

Besides being a well crafted, beautifully written, pitch-perfect piece of commercial art, it’s also a case study in social messaging and how to define your audience.

All athletic footwear brands have lines of sneakers retailers refer to as “casual” or “urban footwear.” What makes this campaign interesting is that Puma is the first of the high performance, pure sport athletic brands that thought of creating a new tribe for this product (side)line.

With this campaign, Puma is choosing their customers: the social athletes, the play harders, the revved up revelers.

Welcome to the world, the “after hours athlete.” There was a time in my life when I would have met you on this playing field, would have joined your team, but I go to sleep way too early for your pick up games.

I’m content to admire your endurance — and watch you get some action — from the bleachers.

-Matthew DiGirolamo, Cause Catalysts
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Colonel Sanders Has a Case of Pink Eye

So much criticism has already been heaped on KFC for its “Buckets for the Cure” cause marketing partnership with Susan G. Komen.

Various accusations of “pinkwashing” have come from cancer researchers, nutritional experts and other cause marketing analysts and there is no need to rehash them all here.

Yet as a communications strategist, I feel compelled to comment on an issue that I haven’t yet seen raised.

From my perspective, what helped the campaign rise to the level of absurdity was the terrible timing of KFC’s corporate communications.

Simply put, I’ve never seen a company’s brand message so poorly planned, managed and sequenced.

At its best, a cause marketing campaign is a story about a group of ordinary characters (a corporation, a charity, often a celebrity) who find their purpose motives aligned in some important way and decide to do something extraordinary together.

However, when it seems like one of the characters shouldn’t be in the story — when they appear out of nowhere or out of sequence — the whole narrative feels forced, inauthentic and inappropriate.

KFC became one of those characters.

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USA Today Takes Kindness Community to Twitter

I just stumbled upon the USA Today’s Twitter hashtag charity campaign — #AmericaWants. And it ends today.

I fancy myself plugged in to this world so I’m surprised I didn’t hear about it. I guess it was just one of those weeks.

Twitter users are being asked to tweet for their favorite charitable organization. All participating tweets must include “#AmericaWants (insert full name of charity) to get a full-page ad in USA TODAY.”

The 501c3 with the most qualifying tweets wins a full-page, full-color ad in the USA Today valued at $189,400.

While a clever use of Twitter, these kinds contests favor the charitable haves over the have nots. Most community-based organizations — the ones who are truly desperate for the national attention that this advertising can bring — don’t have the social media muscle to compete against the likes of celebrity-sponsored organizations with tens of thousands of followers. (A case in point)

Either way, it’s refreshing to see traditional publishing trying something new in the social media and social cause space.
-Matthew DiGirolamo, Cause Catalysts
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What Do Drugs, Guns & Kids Have in Common?

Photo credit: Flickr @anksmcskanks

The Body Shop wants you to know that they are all “sold on a street corner near you.”

Last week, The NY Times Media Decoder Blog shined a spotlight on the Body Shop’s campaign against the exploitation of children through sex trafficking, and I was impressed by the retailer’s comprehensive approach to issue advocacy.

In addition to issue research and the aggressive advertising campaign, the Body Shop also sponsored a film screening and panel discussion on the child sex trade.

Seeing their stores as “amazing communications platforms,” the company has trained their salespeople to be able to educate customers about the issue and direct them to their Web site for more info.

A special line of products was also created to empower customers to raise funds for two organizations, the Somaly Mam Foundation and the ECPAT International, a global network of organization working to End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography and Trafficking of Children for Sexual Purposes.

The Soft Hands Kind Heart Hand Cream urges customers to “lend a hand, or two” to stop the trafficking and sexual exploitation of children and young people.

Sexual exploitation is a tough, unglamorous cause and the Body Shop should be applauded for taking the risk on it.

Social advocacy campaigns are not new territory for the retailer, though. They have been taking on domestic violence as part of their core values for a decade.

The Body Shop is a company that understands the potential positive social impact of its brand.
-Matthew DiGirolamo, Cause Catalysts
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BMW Adding “Some Humanity” to Its Brand

Writing about BMW’s new “Joy” campaign in the Wall Street Journal on Saturday, Alex Kellogg picked up on a trend in how cars, particularly luxury vehicles, are being sold right now.

Car makers are eschewing messages focused on power, performance and status in favor of ones emphasizing safety, value and humanity.

With Americans tightening their belts, BMW AG is parking “the ultimate driving machine” in the garage, at least for a while. The auto maker for years has promoted the power and performance of its cars using that slogan, one of the longest-running and most well-known in the auto industry. But now the company is switching gears. On Friday, it was launching an advertising campaign that focuses on the joy the company says comes from owning its vehicles and suggests BMWs are safe for mothers and children. One print ad uses the tagline “Joy is Maternal”—a departure from past promotions that touted horsepower, handling and acceleration.

Jack Pitney, vice president of marketing for BMW North America, summed it up best: “We hope to really add some humanity to our brand” and “show the diversity” of buyers.

While Kellogg suggests that BMW is shifting its message to appeal to “Americans tightening their belts” during this recession, I would attribute it to a broader and more powerful marketing trend taking hold in this country: winning over women.

While women still earn less than men, they now control 83 cents of every dollar spent by American families. Women also represent half of the U.S. workforce for the first time in the nation’s history, and they have been impacted far less by the current recession. See: The He-cession.

83% is serious buying power and marketers are still figuring out how to navigate this sea change.

When BMW says it would like to “add humanity” and “show diversity” in the most expensive marketing campaign in its history, you can sort of read between the lines.

This is not just recession style re-branding. “Joy is Maternal” is too dramatic a shift to explain it that way.

BMW is trying to broaden its appeal to — and make an emotional connection with — the one half of humanity that has been traditionally left out of its macho, tech-centric Ultimate Driving Machine brand vision.

Marketers follow the money. And I predict that many tech companies will soon be driving in the same direction.
-Matthew DiGirolamo, Cause Catalysts
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The Search for Google’s Heart is Over

On any given day of the week, I have Gmail, Google Reader, Google Calendar, Google Tasks, Google Voice and Google Docs all opened up in separate tabs within my Google Chrome browser. That browser opens up to Google Search.

I use these Google products every day because they are enormously helpful tools. They are smart, simple, straightforward and well-designed widgets.

While most brands would kill to have just a couple of strong consumer touchpoints, Google is blessed with dozens of popular branded products used every day by millions of people.

But are these billions of interactions leaving a strong emotional impression on people? Are they creating a chord-striking narrative?

Most of the time, I use Google technology without even thinking about it. I have no deep feeling about these products.

My guess is that is true for most people. And I think that is a problem for Google, especially given the gains being made by Bing: a search engine with a personality manufactured by a multi-million dollar advertising campaign.

Left to its own devices, sometimes even a good user experience of technology can come off as somewhat chilly and spiritless. That’s why warmer meanings needs to be layered over the cold mechanics.

But the left-brained engineer types that run Google have never made a deliberate effort to connect with its consumers on an emotional level and communicate a resonant back story for the company and its products.

Which is why the communications strategist in me was overjoyed to watch Google’s Super Bowl ad, “Parisian Love.” It accomplished exactly what it needed to: it finally humanized Google. The ad was everything its products and services have become known for — smart, simple and well-engineered — but it was also emotionally intelligent.

The strongest brands marry the mind with matters of the heart, and that is precisely what this ad does.

Google is inviting its users to see their daily interactions with the company’s technologies as part of their own personal journey.

People are being asked to think and feel about Search in a new way — as a meaningful, life-long experience.
-Matthew DiGirolamo, Cause Catalysts
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Wearing Seat Belts – For Love or the Law?

Find more videos like this on AdGabber

I came across this powerful ad today via Poke the Beehive (via Adgabber) called “Embrace Life.”

The issue of wearing seat belts has never been given this level of creative treatment before. As far as car safety messages go, it’s a refreshing departure from the fear-based “Click It or Ticket” billboard campaign that we’ve grown accustomed to here in the U.S.

The most effective cause communications are emotional, visual and metaphorical, and this video is a stunning demonstration of that.

But more importantly, what makes this ad so memorable is that it’s unexpected. It’s inspiring action through positive emotions and, as a result, re-framing the issue in an entirely new way.

I will never look at seat belts the same way. Before, they equaled the law; after watching this, they equal love.

And it accomplished all of this without a single word. It goes to show you: sometimes words just get in the way of the message.

This ad is exquisite and deserves to be watched a few times.
-Matthew DiGirolamo, Cause Catalysts

Coca-Cola Tries To Live Positively

Last week, I wrote about Pepsi’s daring decision to sit on the sidelines of this year’s Super Bowl advertising contest in favor of a social media-based cause marketing campaign.

Pepsi’s Refresh Project has been attracting so much media attention that I overlooked Coca-Cola’s own cause campaign, Live Positively.

Coke’s campaign has more modest ambitions. The company will be showcasing two new spots during the Super Bowl, which are also the centerpiece of the cause marketing campaign.

The concept is really quite simple. When Facebook users send a free virtual Coca-Cola gift to their friends through its Live Positively application, Coke gives back in two ways. They donate one dollar to the Boys & Girls Clubs of America (up to $250,000). And they give their new “fans” (of which there are now more than 4 million) a sneak peak at their Wieden & Kennedy-created Super Bowl ads.

I give Coke credit for finding a creative way to engage a large audience with its corporate responsibility mantra. While Pepsi’s project appears to be more of a short-term special initiative, the Live Positively message now represents Coke’s overarching sustainability strategy and brand. More than 4 million people and counting are now connected to what could become the company’s permanent good works feed.

Having said that, I was underwhelmed by the ads. Coke has done an incredible job of articulating its “Happiness” brand message through creative visual storytelling. What I wanted for “Live Positively” was something more like this below — real people, real smiles, real pleasure.

And instead, they give us a redemptive tale of Montgomery Burns.

In addition, the campaign’s cause component is too abstract. Coke should have identified a specific project or local initiative to support within The Boys & Girls Clubs of America. I understand there is a long-standing relationship between the two organizations, but general support is just so stale. It doesn’t tell a compelling story of need or urgency.

Pepsi’s campaign is fresher and more groundbreaking. Not only will the company fund specific community building projects, its voting process will be an important teaching tool. People will learn about the vast range of problems that are plaguing communities and be engaged by the creative approaches to solving them.

Local meets global. Education meets engagement. Media meets meaning. Online meets offline. These intersections are the future of cause marketing and Coke needs to catch up.
-Matthew DiGirolamo, Cause Catalysts