MARQUE! 20 NOVEMBER 2011

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Cause MarketingThe art of Giving...and Winning...

CANVAS

Sneak Peak• Where Philanthropy Ends... - Bharadwaj Battaram

• Cause Marketing: What it is and what it will be - Team Megarth

• Just do it for the cause! - Harsh Gupta

• Is it the Answer? - Kushal Lokhande

A cold in the head causes less suffering than an idea. - Jules Renard

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WHERE PHILANTHROPY ENDS...

Consumers’ growing expectations of companies make corporate philanthropy more important than ever. Corporate philanthropy can be an effective tool for companies that are trying to meet consumers’ rising expectations of the role businesses should play in society, say respondents to a McKinsey global survey.

Corporate philanthropy or corporate giving is the act of corporations donating some of their profits, or their resources, to nonprofit organizations. But it should not be mistaken for Cause related Marketing. They are distinct in that the corporate dollars involved in Cause Marketing are not outright gifts to a nonprofit organization, so they are not treated as tax-deductible charitable contributions. Nonprofits potentially benefit from increased fundraising and exposure. Likewise, corporations that are socially involved potentially benefit from increased brand loyalty and employee morale.

According to cause marketing consultant Jocelyn Daw, cause related marketing is a mutually beneficial collaboration between a corporation and a nonprofit in which their respective assets are combined to:

• create shareholder and social value• connect with a range of constituents (be they consumers, employees, or suppliers)• communicate the shared values of both organizations

In this new era of social responsibility, what a corporation doesn't do can cost it. "Cause marketing" is now the norm, and customers who visit the website and see the advertising want to know that the company shares their desire to make the world a better place by supporting an important cause.

Kim T Gordon lists five important steps necessary in the mastery of this marketing challenge:1. Give from the heart

Cause marketing works best when the company and the employees feel great about the help they are providing to a nonprofit group. What matters most to the company, the team and the customers? Everyone works hard to make a difference when they give from the heart.

2. Choose a related causeA solid cause-marketing campaign often starts with the right affiliation. So while going through

the nonprofit selection process, look for a cause that relates to the company or its products.3. Contribute more than dollars

For many types of businesses, cause marketing involves donating products or services and not simply writing a check. This can help form even stronger consumer associations between what is offered and the good work done.

4. Formalize your affiliationTo make the affiliation a win-win for everyone, the company must work with the nonprofit to

define how it will help the business increase its visibility, brand or company awareness.5. Mount a marketing campaign

Success in cause marketing often means motivating an audience to take action, such as making a donation or participating in an event.. Using a dedicated marketing campaign, one can reach and persuade the target group while also raising awareness for the business and its commitment to social responsibility.

Like Wade Boggs once said, we live in a world where a positive attitude causes a chain reaction of positive thoughts, events and results. It is a catalyst and sparks extraordinary results.

- Bharadwaj BattaramCanvas - EditorIIM Rohtak

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CAUSE MARKETING - WHAT IT IS AND WHAT IT WILL BE

People, not customers or consumers but people are what Marketing is all about. What they like doing, what they don’t and more importantly why they choose what they choose? What is it that people base their choices on?

Be it Apple’s, “Think Different” campaign or Audi’s, “Never Follow” ad series, the power behind some of the world’s most recognized brands has been the bond that businesses establish with people – bond not of a promise or a product but of active participation, of collective purpose.

Purpose is what drives people, engages them and ultimately transforms their lives. People seek meaning. People recognize businesses that resonate with their values, start responding in little ways and soon these little ways turn into big ways – meanings become movements, businesses become brands.

Tata Tea experienced a phenomenal growth in its market share from 19.1% to 23.5% after the Jaago Re campaign. The campaign touched people and mobilized them to cast their votes, establishing Tata Tea as a brand working towards the cause of democracy – a people’s purpose.

Internationally, marketers see cause marketing as the concept that builds brands by promoting their affiliation to social causes people care about. Increasing social awareness and the urge to be a part of social change motivates people to identify themselves with businesses that advocate social causes. Cause Marketing has established that community development and support could be positioned at the intersection of business objectives and societal needs with significant

bottom-line and community impacts, paving the way for businesses to create blended value.

Though it is a well established concept in the developed world, it still has to find a decent footing in the developing world. For many years in India, community development goals were philanthropic activities that were seen as separate from business objectives, not fundamental to them. Times are changing fast.

Recently, Pfizer and Times of India launched an initiative on the World Diabetes Day in 60 different cities across India. Walkathons, street plays, nutrition camps and several other events were organized with experts advising people to maintain an active lifestyle to avoid diabetes and other diseases. Around 50 top monuments and buildings across the country were lit up blue under the Abbott Diabetes Blue Footprint – 2011 Initiative.

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The Standard Chartered Marathon held annually in Mumbai helps nonprofits to not only create awareness about their particular cause but also raise money through the effort.

Aircel recently launched the Save Our Tigers campaign, which is aimed to encourage people to blog about the decreasing tiger population and stay up-to-date with tiger facts. People can also donate money to nonprofits working for the cause.

Businesses have started realizing that it is no longer about being loosely associated with a cause or partnering with nonprofits – it is now about integrating the concern and commitment for a cause into business strategy. This shift can be seen as a step towards creating value based businesses that lay emphasis on investing in initiatives directed towards pressing social issues.

Founded in August 2010, Megarth stands at the doorsteps of change with a belief in people, purpose, creating actions and transforming lives. Our beliefs represent everything that Megarth is.

At Megarth, we create opportunities for businesses and nonprofits, we create opportunities for people to seek meaning, to define a purpose in life and to invite more people into active participation. We create action zones aimed at serving the needs of people. We call this People’s Marketing.

There is no turning back now. As Cause Marketing continues to evolve, “why do you exist – your purpose in life?” will become one of the most commonly asked questions by people across the world leading to a global phenomenon – People’s Marketing.

- Team Megarth

http://www.megarth.com/http://www.disha.ktj.in/http://www.facebook.com/Megarthdotcom

To avail avenues for Community Investment and Cause Marketing contact - Pushkina Nautiyalpushkina.nautiyal@megarth.com 

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JUST DO IT FOR THE CAUSE!

Cause related marketing basically revolves around the good we can do for the society and get some good back. It makes it possible for a brand to emotionally connect with the people because we all want to do good in our own way and if someone else is doing that we want to be part of that and cause marketing makes that happen.

It’s possible to run a one-off cause marketing campaign, but companies need to be clear with what their goal is: To make a difference in the world? To sell more product? To improve their brand image? Businesses love cause marketing, and the belief is that supporting a good cause translates into stronger sales. Social-Cause Marketing is, no doubt a very powerful communication tool for the brands to stand out in the clutter. The partnerships between brands and charities can increase customer loyalty and help the brands stay in consumer’s minds. It is a way of communicating company’s Corporate Social Responsibility through marketing communications.

One crucial point to note is that in any cause marketing campaign, it’s not enough to say that your actions have triggered a donation “to help a hungry child”.  Which hungry child?  Where?  How will this donation help, specifically?  This typically comes down to providing compelling stories.  Coincidentally, these stories are the ones that take hold and can spark the coveted sharing aspect. And Nike is probably one of the few companies in the international arena which have carried this style of marketing in a nearly flawless way. They have been able to create a ‘larger than life’ image of their brand ‘LIVESTRONG’.

 Nike's LIVESTRONG is association between Nike and Lance Armstrong Foundation, ‘LiveStrong’. This collection is to increase the partnership’s innovative efforts to raise awareness for the cancer fight globally and expand sales internationally. It started with the iconic yellow rubber bracelets, which since 2004 have generated more than $80 million for the Lance Armstrong Foundation. An example being set by Nike is that

100 percent of the proceeds from Nike's entire Livestrong collection go to the Lance Armstrong Foundation and this association is growing stronger year by year!

Social cause marketing helps a company create a differentiated brand positioning, develop a stronger customer bond, goodwill, drive sales, increase market value and enhance brand image in the market. What else does a brand need? So, Just Do It!!

-Harsh GuptaIIM Rohtak

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CAUSE MARKETING - IS IT THE ANSWER?

We all are aware of the criticism that the Capitalists of the world are being subjected to, after the 2008-09 screw-up of the world economies. Critics argue that the corporate have changed paths and now are exercising profiteering. One can find out the difference between profiteering and profit making. In a capitalist world, profit-making is a factor of utmost importance if the society is to be developed. However, it needs to be understood that the concept of ‘Society’ is of aggregate nature here. The profit-making society will develop for sure but the benefits generally get allocated disproportionately. When we delve deeper into this whole system of profit generation and the society benefitting from it, we find that the traditional channel of benefit transfer to the constituents of the society touches the few who may be termed as ‘best to get the benefits’. This system has a defect that it goes on allocating the benefits to the ‘best’ and gives little chance to other ‘not-so-best’ constituents of the society and the society is developed at a rate less than optimal and in a way which cannot be termed to be holistic.

Cause marketing has turned out to be a channel connecting the profit-generator’s benefits and the ‘not-so-best’ constituents of the society, giving them a chance. The effectiveness of this channel or link is still under question as there has not been a major organized initiative in this sector.

From the business’ point of view, merely donating funds to a cause through an NGO does not ensure that they will register themselves with their target customers. People are wise enough to see through a ‘hey look at me’ campaign. Most of the campaigns, if you would see today, are subtle in their approach. But be too subtle and you will lose money. This is how corporate views cause marketing.

It makes business sense for the corporate to get involved in Cause Marketing. Whirlpool and Habitat for Humanity’s initiative deserves a mention here. Whirlpool provided a refrigerator for each Habitat home built in the US. It used this as a major driver of brand loyalty with the Reba McEntire campaign. Corporate needs something to make people talk about its brands to increase something called as TOMA (top of mind awareness). In today’s cluttered communication

environment, Cause Marketing is something which is cutting through it and reaching its target audience.

But have we been successful in establishing another channel of resource flow in the form of ‘Cause Marketing’ to develop our society? I see another problem here that arises from the fact that the term ‘development of society’ is itself a term encompassing a lot of things. There is a range of things to be done in this society for its betterment or holistic development. Here again we face a problem of scarcity; scarcity of funding from the profit-makers. Scarcity welcomes economic principles with open hands and again establishes laws of so called ‘best utility providing allocations’ which heavily depend on the resource master and his/her perception of derived utility from that particular expenditure of resource. So if there are three causes which a company is considering to get involved with as a part of its CSR activity, which one would it choose? What will be the basis of weighing these causes? Will it seek the overall society’s benefit or will it again get carried away by the notion of getting most for itself out of this activity? The answer is pretty straight considering the premise on which the capitalist world works.

An example of a non-deserving cause getting funded at the expense of other important but less interesting causes is the 1980’s money raising exercise of the Muscular Dystrophy Association. It raised tens of millions of dollars despite it having lesser developmental chances as the muscular dystrophy is a genetic disorder. In such a situation again, the neediest charities don’t get the funds they deserve. Again a problem of channel touch.

The Solution? Introducing another intermediary in the chain? Government regulations? Government watchdog? Nobody in the capitalist world will work for anything else but generating profits in whatever form they value: tangible or intangible. So does that mean no intermediary can tackle this problem? Has government intervention in certain sectors been successful in bringing about desired results?

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Resources abound, the issue boils down to allocation, allocation which is done by valuing utility. Whether we can come up with a better allocation strategy will, in my opinion, decide the effectiveness of this new channel of benefit transfer, as in the existing channel of benefit distribution also, the so called ‘best’ is allocated the most.

Another major problem that I perceive with the whole win-win concept of supporting the causes is of the person driving all these efforts. Let’s take a look at the driver of these cause funding activities: the target customer. Is she aware of the cause she is supporting by buying an associated brand? How does a person find out which cause to support and which not to? An average human being does not even think while buying some brand supporting a cause X whether that cause deserves funding or not. He is limited by his ken and when you form segments out of a

population, a practice followed by every business, the common knowledge range is again drastically reduced. The corporate again use the marketing principles of getting involved with the causes that an average person in their target population is aware of so that they can establish a better brand-connect with their customers while spending as less as possible because educating the target customer about a certain thing she doesn’t know requires money and time.

Cause Marketing, they say, is benefitting our society in many ways. They say it is a channel of resource flow to the real, meaningful societal development. They say that people are happy that by buying a particular brand associated with a cause, they are doing their bit to develop their society. They say it is a win-win for the society and its major constituent, the corporate. I ask all such people, Is it so?

- Kushal LokhandeIIM Rohtak

MARQUE! 6 NOVEMBER 2011

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