Cause Marketing: Build Your Image and Bottom Line Through Socially Responsible Partnerships, Programs, and Events

by Joe Marconi

Cause-related marketing programmes not only enhance a company's image but also increase employee satisfaction. Ninety percent of employees in companies with such programmes report feeling proud of... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0793152585
• ISBN13: 9780793152582
• Release Date: August 2002
• Publisher: Dearborn Trade
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 1.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.3" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

Packed With Knowledge!

Your company's a success, thank you, and now you want to give something back. What should you do? Write a check? Start a foundation? Joe Marconi explains that cause marketing is all this and more. In cause marketing, you identify how your company can best make a contribution while leveraging its good deeds to improve business. This makes sense: people like to buy from companies that care. But it's not as easy as it sounds. How do you choose the right partner (or do you want a partner at all) and design a program? What are the potential pitfalls? Marconi's book is a primer, complete with ample real-world examples, on the principles of cause marketing, with insight on the challenge of taking credit without appearing phony or selfish. Although it is more rhetorical than practical, we recommend this book to senior executives who want to learn about the benefits - and drawbacks - of cause marketing.

The ROI of Social Responsibility

Marconi has made a valuable contribution to the on-going dialogue about marketing by explaining how to "build image and bottom line through socially responsible partnerships, programs, and events." Presumably he agrees with John Hill that PR is "truth well-told." The most effective marketing programs, those which create or increase demand, include PR initiatives. As we all know, there are negative connotations of PR because it is not always truthful even if well-told. Marconi notes that "there has been a dramatic increase in the allocation of funds from marketing budgets that provide some benefit to nonprofit organizations. The expenditure of these funds to serve the interests of both the company and the community has come to be known as [in italics] cause marketing." The one-year anniversary of 9/11 caused major corporations and their agencies to question whether or not to advertise on that tragic date. Their concern was that any advertising, however thoughtful and sensitive, could be perceived as self-serving. That is a legitimate concern. In Chapter 5, Marconi cites six examples of "self-serving and opportunistic" initiatives during a national period of sadness following 9/11. Here's one: "Morrell & Company announced in a full-page ad that it would hold a `Grapes of Grief and Gratitude' benefit wine auction for families of the New York firefighters, police, and emergency response professionals." This is cause marketing at its worst.Marconi also includes many examples of cause marketing at its best. That is to say, marketing which establishes contact with those who buy and use their products and services or support their issues and will feel better for doing so. "Cause marketing seeks to take the process even further when the marketer for a company (1) identifies a cause that the company can embrace and believe in, and (2) makes a connection with the constituent group that shares the company's dedication to that cause." What we have here, then, is a cohesive and comprehensive explanation of how to plan and then implement "cause marketing" at its best. Eminently worthwhile organizations receive at least some of the support they urgently need; those who provide that support, who demonstrate corporate social responsibility with active community involvement, generally "do well by doing good."But here's a key point: Unless such support and involvement are -- and are perceived to be -- both appropriate and authentic (i.e. sincere), they invariably do irreparable damage to an organization's credibility. Marconi explains this point while examining a number of case studies of both effective and counter-productive cause marketing. All things considered, people generally prefer to do business with those with whom they share the same values and, better yet, with whom they share the same loyalties. It is obvious to his reader that Marconi cares deeply about corporate social responsibility and active community involvement. It would be a mistake, however,