Consumers are sick of all the shouting. They’ve put in their ear buds and stopped listening to what companies have to say. But they haven’t stopped shopping. Now, they’re turning to friends, family and other consumers to help them decide what to buy. In fact, 92 percent of consumers trust earned media—or put the old-fashioned way, word-of-mouth marketing—above all other forms of advertising, according to Nielsen. Only 47 percent of consumers trust paid television, magazine or newspaper ads.
While a clever commercial or a sports sponsorship may elevate a brand for a short time, consumers have shown they are more interested in learning what a company stands for—long-term values, not short-term sales goals.
The 2011 Cone/Echo Global CR Opportunity Study showed that more than 50 percent of consumers would recommend a company to others if it supports a cause. And the 2012 Edelman goodpurpose Global Study showed that when quality and price are equal, 53 percent of consumers rank social purpose as the most important factor in selecting a brand.
But serving a social purpose is easier said than done. Successfully executing a cause-based campaign requires an in-depth understanding of your company’s values, a non-profit partner or cause that embodies those ideals, a well thought-out communications strategy, and clearly established (and measurable) goals. Rather than simply sponsoring a popular charity event, the most successful marketers are finding causes and organizations they can support for the long term, says Bob Gilbreath, author of “The Next Evolution of Marketing.”
“Brands are starting to see that just being another logo on something is not really helping them make a high ROI,” he says. “You have to start with what’s important to your customers and how that relates to your business.”
Saving the Taste of Summer
Häagen-Dazs ice cream has built its brand around a commitment to natural ingredients. In the world of high-fructose corn syrup, its flavors remain closely tied to the earth. When the company started looking for a big way to give back in 2008, the obvious place to turn was nature.
Research led the communications team to a disturbing ecological crisis—the mass disappearance of honey bees. Every spring, beekeepers find entire hives empty, with only the queen waiting for her missing workers to return.
For scientists, the problem is confounding. They don’t know why some hives are decimated while their neighbors continue to thrive. For citizens, the issue is complex. A sharp decline in the honey bee population could impact the multitude of plant species that need bees to survive. For companies and their customers, a variety of products could disappear from the shelves. Plus, more than half of Häagen-Dazs’ ice cream flavors are made with bee-pollinated ingredients; no more honey bees, no more Rocky Road.
Driven by a desire to help, the company looked for opportunities to solve the honey bee crisis while educating consumers about the bees’ plight. With these dual goals in mind, the company launched Help the Honey Bees, a campaign that integrated sales-based fundraising, educational Web content and PR initiatives.
• Häagen-Dazs started by including a honey bee logo on all of the flavors that featured bee-pollinated ingredients.
• It donated a portion of sales to the research centers at Penn State University and University of California, Davis, which were already tackling the honeybee dilemma.
• The company also launched helpthehoneybees.com, which offers information about gardening with bee-friendly plants and avoiding potentially harmful pesticides.
• The company’s brand director even testified on Capitol Hill in favor of funding bee research and conservation as part of 2008 farm legislation.
The campaign educated consumers about the disappearance of bees and inspired them to support Häagen-Dazs in grocery stores and ice cream shops. After the program launched, Häagen-Dazs saw a 5.2 percent jump in sales, the largest single sales spike in a year, coupled with a 69 percent increase in brand advocacy. At the end of the 2008 campaign, Häagen-Dazs had raised $250,000 for honey bee research through purchase-driven donations.
“Our target customer is very aware and wants to know more about the food they buy,” says Diane McIntyre, brand communications manager for Häagen-Dazs. “They want it to be as free from chemicals as they can get. So, this message totally resonated with our customers, because it’s who they are. They just really got behind it.”
Keeping its customers’ values in mind, Häagen-Dazs has sustained the Help the Honey Bee campaign since 2008. In 2010, the company worked with UC Davis to extend the impact of its educational campaign by establishing the Honey Bee Haven, a public garden that teaches people how they can help protect bees.
And still, the Häagen-Dazs team felt it could do more to expand the reach of the program. So in 2012, the company shifted the campaign’s focus to social media, using Facebook and Twitter to educate its fans and followers about the bees’ ongoing troubles. Across all campaigns, the brand has donated more than $800,000 to its university partners since 2008.
“We’re committed to staying in the game and educating people and making what we’re doing relevant,” says McIntyre. “We’re sending the message that bees still need help.”
To create a clearer emotional connection between ice cream and the honey bees, Häagen-Dazs focused on the special time of year that brings them together: summer. As part of an engagement campaign, the company asked
its fans to submit pictures that conjured the joy and tranquility of the season, reminding them that for every entry, the company would donate $5 to honey bee research. Häagen-Dazs then published a free e-book of the best images, titled Ode to Summer, and donated another $5 for every download. At the end of 2012, the program had received 1,700 entries and the book had been downloaded 1,000 times.
“Our interest is in building brand loyalty, and brand loyalty is bigger than just hoping they’ll buy our products when they go to the [grocery store],” says McIntyre. “The more we can engage with them on subjects that interest them, the more we can build that brand loyalty.”
Hearts and Minds
Companies often fear that engaging in cause-based campaigns will open them up to criticism, especially if consumers think they have a cynical sales motive. However, the Edelman goodpurpose survey showed that consumer expectations around these campaigns have evolved with time. In 2012, 76 percent of consumers said they think it’s acceptable for brands to support
causes and make money at the same time—a sharp increase from the 33 percent who believed this in 2008.
This change in consumer attitudes is partly due to the gradual confluence of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and cause marketing initiatives, says David Hessekiel, founder and president of the Cause Marketing Forum. In the past, CSR was seen as the ivory tower of corporate governance, defining the ideal way a company should interact with the world, and cause marketing was seen as a highly promotional activity, he explains.
“Over the past decade, those two camps have converged. In this economic environment and in this world of instant communication, corporations need to have social responsibility policies that tie back to the strength of the business and they need to have cause marketing programs that are more than shallow, image-polishing programs,” Hessekiel says.
The rapid evolution of social media has been a primary driver of this shift. Because consumers can quickly build negative sentiment about a brand they feel lacks transparency or authenticity, companies
have begun to develop cause marketing plans more strategically, keeping the values of their business and their customers top of mind. And while the stick of social scorn is a strong motivator, the carrot of positive impact is even stronger, says “The Next Evolution of Marketing” author Gilbreath.
“Social leans toward cause-related marketing. It rewards good works and allows smaller things to get more traction,” he says. “The only [content] that can make it through people’s filters are what they share with each other.”
Gilbreath says one of the best ways to align a purpose-driven marketing campaign with a company’s business is to build a program from scratch. The Häagen-Dazs “Help the Honey Bees” campaign is one example.
The Pedigree Foundation is another:
• Pedigree, the pet foods brand, created its own 501(c)(3), to take a leadership role in finding homes for animals in need, which connects the company’s values to the values of its pet-owning customers.
• Rather than support a single organization, which puts the brand at risk if that organization does something Pedigree doesn’t agree with, the foundation collects donations and distributes grants to a variety of shelters and breed rescue groups across the country.
• In 2012, Pedigree raised more than $900,000 to help homeless pets.
While managing a full-blown non-profit is more work for Pedigree, it allows the company to define and change its program based on what makes the most business sense—all while giving Pedigree total control of its brand image.
“We’ve seen more brands take ownership of what they are doing,” Gilbreath says. “At the end of the day, you have to control your brand.”
Back for More
For companies that aren’t ready to create their own cause-based programs, it’s important to pick a non-profit partner that fits with the brand’s image and values, Hessekiel says.
“By determining what you want to accomplish and how it fits with the purpose of your company, there’s a greater chance for [the campaign] to be sustained, honed and improved over time, and for it to create economic benefits for your company,” he says.
To get this type of strategic alignment, the luxury car brand Lexus conducted philanthropic research to determine what purpose their customers wanted them to serve in the wider world. It turns out that Lexus owners are twice as likely to give to charities than other luxury car owners.
“The thing that came through loud and clear is they really wanted Lexus to focus on the future. The best way for us to do that is to focus on children,” says Nancy Hubbell, Lexus communications manager.
• Lexus launched the Pursuit of Potential program seven years ago to support organizations that “build, shape and improve children’s lives.”
• The company ran a purpose-driven marketing campaign during its 2012 December To Remember sales event. The Check In For Charity campaign asked consumers to link their FourSquare or Facebook accounts at LexusCheckinforCharity.com to trigger a $10 donation to the Boys and Girls Club of America with every check-in. Lexus pledged to double the donation for check-ins at Lexus dealerships.
While the primary draw of the campaign was to support a charity, the Facebook app’s leaderboard functionality, which ranks both individuals and cities, kept users coming back for more. Although there is no prize for first place, the fun of friendly competition increased the campaign’s stickiness, Hubbell says.
“People sign up for the app and they don’t have to necessarily go back to the app.
All they have to do is what they normally do—check in where they are,” she explains. “But people are going back to see where they are on the leaderboard and which of their friends are participating.” To truly see the impact of this type of campaign, it’s important the company knows exactly what it’s trying to achieve and be able to quantify its success, Hessekiel says.
The Lexus Check In for Charity campaign capped the brand’s contribution at $100,000 and set an engagement goal of 10,000 check-ins. When consumers surpassed those goals in 11 days, Lexus increased the donation limit to $200,000. This new cap was met in just five days, allowing Lexus to see the campaign’s growing impact on consumers in real time. The Lexus team also saw that 215 of the 19,590 unique user check-ins were at Lexus dealerships.
“In everything we do we want to be able to see what the quantifiable impact was,” says Hubbell. “That is very difficult to do when you’re sponsoring an event. But with this type of campaign we can see who’s participating and at what level.”
Gilbreath says that paying attention to these factors—learning what worked and what didn’t— is the key to creating a program that will be both successful and sustainable. “Don’t do something once and forget it,” he says. “That’s the worst thing you can do. You need to be able to build on what you’ve done.”
Over the past two decades, corporate cause sponsorship has climbed steadily to reach roughly $1.7 billion in 2012, in spite of slow economic growth. And Hessekiel believes consumer demand will inspire larger corporate investments in the years to come.
“Consumers have more power than they’ve ever had before. And when we see some brands are standing up and leading us to expect more, we start to expect it everywhere,” he says. “Not only do we like those brands more, we start liking the brands we feel like aren’t part of the solution, less.”