Does Cause Marketing Work?

In her book "Cause Marketing for Nonprofits," Jacelyne Daw describes cause marketing as "partnering for purpose, passion and profits."

As I talk about cause marketing, I'm often asked "what can cause marketing do for our association?"

In addition to supporting a worthy cause, these joint marketing programs energize your members and provide new opportunities to generate media coverage showing your industry in a positive light.

In this post, I want to offer some specific examples of the positive media coverage resulting from the Trees for Troops campaign our AMC manages for the Christmas SPIRIT Foundation. Just to recap, we began this program in 2005. Christmas tree growers and retailers donate fresh, farm-grown Christmas Trees to military families. Our corporate partner, FedEx Freight, delivers the trees to miltiary bases. This year (2008) we will reach 16,500 families at 51 bases. This bring our total reach to 50,000 families.

I've had the opportunity to be on about 12 bases as the trees arrived. The sense of joy, excitement and gratitude on the part of military families (especially kids) is indescribable and well worth our efforts ... which meet the Foundation's vision of advancing the spirit of Christmas for kids, famililes and the environment.

The Trees for Troops program consistently generates positive publicity for both the Christmas tree industry, FedEx and other program participants. In our consumer tracking poll after last season, more than 14 million U.S. households reported reading/seeing/hearing about the Trees for Troops program and about two million households said it influenced their decision to purchase a farm-grown tree in 2007. We will know the results of the 2008 program in mid-January 2009.

Enough writing, just take a few minutes to review this sample of "clips" of national and local TV coverage.

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While I realize it may appear "easy" to get media coverage of Christmas, the reality is cause marketing programs generate media coverage far in excess of the "typical" association news story (with the exception of a scandal).

Still have a question? Answer this: what other program you implement could get you two minutes 37 seconds on the NBC Nightly News?

And, we've seen that Trees for Troops generates great news coverage for our participating members ... adding to their benefit of membership.

Here's an example of a Web site of one of our participating tree retailers:
http://williamsnursery.blogspot.com/2008/12/christmas-101.html

And, if you're still interested ... here is a quick "photo video" of images from the 2008 Trees for Troops program. Enjoy (and consider going to www.treesfortroops.org to make a donation!)



Let us know if you have questions about cause-marketing and what it can do for your association or foundation. Remember that I'll be doing a presentation on this at ASAE's 2009 Great Ideas Confererence in February in Miami.