Cause marketing and social sustainability, Part 1

With the holiday shopping season nearing its holy climax, what better time to evaluate from the business perspective the viability of cause marketing for social sustainability. Does cause marketing work? How to get the most from it?

Define: Cause marketing

Cause or cause-related marketing is a company’s “marketing effort creating a public association with a social or charitable cause or organization to promote the company’s product/service and raise money for the cause or organization”.

Cause marketing may take several forms for the participating company, with the nonprofit partner earning money in a variety of direct or indirect ways:

• Advertising/PR - promoting the cause or strategic partnership
• Sponsorship - funding a program
• Licensing - paying to use the nonprofit partner’s brand
• Paid endorsement – paying to receive public endorsement or certification
• Commission - donating a percentage of revenues
• Affiliate marketing – compensating the nonprofit partner for funneled customers or sales
• Facilitated giving – asking customers to donate to the supported cause or nonprofit

Regardless of its form, cause marketing entails an exchange of promotion for money. For companies, cause marketing is a promotional effort.

Thumb up on cause marketing

Cause marketing has several potential benefits for the participating business:

• improved brand awareness and image
• media coverage and other public relations benefits
• public recognition
• alignment with causes customers support
• employee engagement
• talent attraction and retention
• resulting higher sales

If done right — and there are many pitfalls to execution — cause marketing is a winner for companies.

Thumb down on cause marketing

The main criticism of cause marketing bears the greatest relevance from the sustainability standpoint: under the guise of doing good, cause marketing encourages consumption. How many times have you seen a company say, “Buy our product and save the world”? Cause marketing tends to require additional purchases to generate revenue for causes or nonprofits – the more you buy, the more gets donated. Consumption with an added benefit may be better than consumption without it, but should lesser evil be your guide?

Buying stuff to benefit causes may have another detrimental effect: consumers, particularly those whose value system doesn’t include doing good as a matter of course, tend to consider their ethical purchases the fulfillment of their responsibility, only to continue business as usual afterward. Cause marketing leads to no lasting behavioral change.

Defined as a “marketing effort”, cause marketing is typically the marketing department’s responsibility, not a strategic effort. Mis- or non-alignment with strategy is all too frequent an occurence, and marketing metrics the yardstick of success. Because marketing typically focuses on short-term results, cause marketing tends to be short termist.

(The trend toward goodness 3.0, where supporting causes is no longer a nice-to-do but a have-to-do for companies, sounds encouraging – perhaps it will mean a shift toward doing cause marketing more strategically.)

Good results from cause marketing regardless of the motive. The primary objective of all forms of cause marketing is, ultimately, improving the Profit bottom line – witness the mismatch between the amounts spent on advertising the support for causes and the actual contributions. In cause marketing, social good is merely a means to the commercial, instead of an objective in itself. Cause marketing is primarily done with ulterior motives, without People bottom line considerations.

Finally, while nonprofits and causes greatly benefit from the revenue their partnership with companies generates, cause marketing typically results in simple cash transfers to nonprofits. As a result, once the nonprofit  and business consummate their relationship with a check-giving ceremony, no further accountability or positive effects ensue.

In part 2 I’ll look at how to turn these shortcomings around and make cause marketing more socially sustainable.

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Cause marketing and social sustainability, Part 2

Image credit: slimmer_jimmer

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