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May 2007 Archives
May 25, 2007
Make-A-Wish Foundation's 150,000th Wish
Posted by Shawn Stewart | Filed under: Cause Marketing
Who hasn't heard of the Make-A-Wish Foundation? And for that matter who doesn’t love the Make-A-Wish Foundation?
Since 1980 they've been in the business of bringing hope and delight to kids battling life-threatening illnesses by becoming their genie in a bottle. I've been what you could call a passive fan of the organization since I was 12 years old. That's when they arranged for a boy my age to meet who I thought was the coolest person in the world--Hulk Hogan. If they were helping kids and knew Hulk Hogan, I was sold... Make-A-Wish was cool!
Well, I’m all grown up and I no longer think that Hulk Hogan is the coolest person in the world. But I’m still a fan of the Make-A-Wish Foundation. So we wanted to let you in on some exciting cause marketing news that our friends at Cone, Inc. told us about.
Continue reading "Make-A-Wish Foundation's 150,000th Wish"
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Designing Brand Experiences
Posted by Shawn Stewart | Filed under: Brand & Identity
Last week was my turn to lead the team for our Brown Bag Lunch--and my book? Designing Brand Experiences by Robin Landa. If you're looking for a good Branding 101 book, this is a good one. There's a big chunk of the book that many will find to be very elementary, but the discussion on brand strategy, brand essence and brand constructs, in my opinion, is the real value of the book.
Continue reading "Designing Brand Experiences"
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May 21, 2007
4 Types of Corporate Responsibility Brands
Posted by Shawn Stewart | Filed under: Philosophy
There was an interesting article written by Solitaire Townsend of the UK communications firm Futerra posted on the Ethical Corporation web site on May 7th. Solitaire's article touches on the importance of your corporate responsibility flowing hand in hand with your business strategy, something we mentioned in a post on last friday.
The article identifies four kinds of companies that exist when it comes to corporate responsibility, or corporate social responsibility, as it's called in the UK, those kinds of companies are:
The CSR brand - This is for you if your market research shows that corporate responsibility is a key driver of brand preference with your customers. From the Body Shop onwards, many niche players have been CSR brands, and the signals are that we will see more of them. If you have the right business model and the right customers then your brand promise becomes a responsibility promise.The "bit of CSR" brand - Perhaps CSR can be part of your brand in selected targeted ways: through sub-brands, strategic partnerships and with specific customers. You will take this approach when your market research shows that corporate responsibility does drive preference, but your company cannot live up to a full CSR brand, or when only a sub-segment of your customers place significant value on responsible business practices.
The CSR shy brand - For many companies corporate responsibility has been part of the company's philosophy and practice but not visible to consumers, either because the company is not ready to integrate responsibility into the brand or because the customer has been shown not to care.
The greenwash brand - This one is easy. You do not actually undertake any core corporate responsibility activities but build it into your brand promise anyway. We all enjoy watching what happens next.
Understanding where you're at on this list is important to understanding what cause marketing could and should look like for your business. It's good food for thought.
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May 18, 2007
Peanut Butter and Corporate Responsibility
Posted by Shawn Stewart | Filed under: Philosophy
I was reading through some online articles on the CRO web site and was reminded of our tendency to look past the obvious. You know, kind of like when I open the pantry and yell to my wife, "Where's the peanut butter?" and she walks in, reaches up, and pulls it from a place on the shelf that's four inches from my face. I give her an embarrassed smirk, and she smiles and shakes her head. Come on, you've been there.
So where's the peanut butter? Your business is, well, a business; we don't expect you to be a nonprofit. You should make money, but you should do it responsibly. So the way your company is corporately responsible is best approached on the foundation of your business strategy. Let me say that again--because this is the thing that's often right in front of our face. Corporate responsibility should flow out of your business strategy. That way, it makes sense, it's an authentic effort to help, and positions you to stay in business.
Continue reading "Peanut Butter and Corporate Responsibility"
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May 16, 2007
At the Cause Marketing Forum in New York
Posted by Brad Abare | Filed under: Personality News
Brian and I are in Times Square this week at the Cause Marketing Forum. In addition to meeting up with new and old friends, we're thrilled to be a part of the ongoing conversations that businesses and nonprofits are having about cause marketing.
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May 11, 2007
Why Starbucks is Losing Their Soul
Posted by Shawn Stewart | Filed under: Philosophy
Brett, Brian and I were talking on a recent road trip about the Starbucks memo from their founder, Howard Schultz. In it he rang an alarm about how dangerously close Starbucks is to losing their soul.
We discussed possible reasons beyond what Schultz had mentioned based on our own experience of Starbucks and our Personality Profile™ process. Along the way we stopped for coffee at--you guessed it--Starbucks, and boy did our conclusions become crystal clear.
Continue reading "Why Starbucks is Losing Their Soul"
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May 10, 2007
Spider-Man, Keynote Speaker on Corporate Responsibility
Posted by Shawn Stewart | Filed under: Cause Marketing
Spider-Man gets it--do you? If you woke up tomorrow with the ability to crawl up walls, swing through city streets and stop bad guys without breaking a sweat, would you choose to be a hero? That's why we love Spidey. He's our friendly neighborhood super hero.
Spider-Man has great power and with it a great opportunity to do what few can--make a significant difference. That opportunity would never be realized without Peter Parker's commitment to responsibility. In the words of Peter's late great Uncle Ben, "With great power, comes great responsibility."
Your business is a lot like Spider-Man. You have great power and because of that, great responsibility--your public perceives it that way and as the ol' saying goes, perception is reality. Let's face it, responsibility can be heavy at times, but it doesn't have to be all "because we have to's." It can be your business' greatest opportunity to do a lot of good and reap the rewards of a hero--from profit to praise.
Cause marketing is a great way for your corporate responsibility to swing into action. If you'd like to be a hero, do some good and get applauded for it. Drop us a line, we'd love to be your first fan and help you take a step closer to being known as, "Your friendly neighborhood [fill in the blank].
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May 8, 2007
Memory Project
Posted by Kevin D. Hendricks | Filed under: Featured Nonprofit
Started by a college student in 2004, the Memory Project offers orphans hope by connecting them with high school art students who paint their portraits. The project gives art teachers pictures of the orphans and teachers then assign their students to paint portraits. The finished works of art are then delivered to the orphans, giving them something to cherish and remind them of their childhood.
"They share everything, so they don't have much they can call their very own," Jayden Kirn, a director of an orphanage in Nicaragua, told CBS News in the midst of the excitement of the portraits being delivered. "I think it will touch them profoundly once they get down and get a private moment to sit and look at that picture."
Ben Schumaker founded Memory Project after a trip to a Guatemalan orphanage when he felt compelled to do something but didn't know what.
"Then a Guatemalan man who had grown up in an orphanage stopped by and told me how much he wished he had something to help him remember his earliest years," Schumaker told the Duluth News Tribune. "He didn't have any photographs of himself as a child or any parents to tell him what he was like. I've always enjoyed making portraits of people, so the idea came naturally."
So far Memory Project has handed out more than 4,000 portraits to orphans around the world and started a book project for students of all ages. (links via Foursquare NextGen Summit '07)
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May 7, 2007
World Red Cross/Red Crescent Day 2007
Posted by Shawn Stewart | Filed under: Cause Marketing
May 8 is a day to say thanks to an organization that has helped and continues to help countless people all around the world. We're all familiar with them and their involvement in jumping to the rescue.
Many times those that jump to help others go unnoticed--so to everyone who has ever given to the Red Cross so that they could help, or to all those who work with the Red Cross or Red Crescent around the world--we just want to say thanks!
When people help people, we're the most like our true selves. And it's beautiful!
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Looking for an Account Director
Posted by Brad Abare | Filed under: Personality News
We've been really focused on research and development the past year, and Brett has done a wonderful job leading that charge. In the process, we've learned that doing both R&D and directing accounts is a little tricky. Go figure! So we're on the hunt for an account director because Brett still has a lot of R&D to do (billion dollar ideas take brains you know!). If you're interested, or know of anybody who is, please point them our way. A full job description is available online.
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May 4, 2007
Getting Paid to Think
Posted by Brad Abare | Filed under: Inspiration
If you can get past the pompous posture of the author, Thinking for a Living by Joey Reiman is an excellent read. Although the book has been around for several years, it came at a particularly helpful time for Personality™ as we've been navigating our way through the development of several new processes that involve a whole lot of thinking.
"Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is probably why so few engage in it." -Henry Ford
Reiman is the founder of an ideation company that started after he launched and sold an advertising agency. He got out of the ad business because clients were paying for the execution of ideas, not the ideas themselves. I've talked before about this broken agency model.
"An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an invasion of ideas." -Victor Hugo
Some have said that we use only 10 percent of our brains to think. Reiman thinks this is too little of a space for big ideas, and suggests nine characteristics of thinkers that are using more than their 10 percent.
Continue reading "Getting Paid to Think"
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May 3, 2007
Baskin-Robbin's 31-Cent Ice Cream Scoops for Charity
Posted by Brian Zopf | Filed under: Cause Marketing
Earlier this week ice cream scoops at your neighborhood Baskin-Robbins were just 31 cents per scoop! That's right, a 2.5 oz scoop for such a creamy steal! So what's the catch? Cause marketing.
The revenues raised from scoops sold on May 2nd (a reported $100,000) will go to the National Fallen Firefighters Foundation--a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization created by Congress in 1992 to honor America’s fallen fire heroes, assist their families and co-workers, and support research to prevent further in-the-line-of-duty deaths. Headquartered in Emmitsburg, Md., the Foundation receives funding through private donations from caring individuals, organizations, other foundations and corporations--like Baskin-Robbins!
Continue reading "Baskin-Robbin's 31-Cent Ice Cream Scoops for Charity"
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We Need to Get Better at Storytelling
Posted by Kevin D. Hendricks | Filed under: Marketing
We believe in the power of storytelling. Bono, the frontman for U2--arguably one of the biggest rock bands in the world--and the social activist behind Product Red, One and DATA, agrees with us:
"We need to get better at storytelling," Bono told the Times. "Bill Gates tells me this all the time. We've got to get better at telling the success stories of Africa in addition to the horror stories." (from E! Online)
That's why we offer the Storytelling Workshop and have put together a white paper on how to tell your cause's story. We've been on the story train for a while, but it's nice to have Bono on board.
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May 1, 2007
Object Orange Highlights Abandoned Buildings in Detroit
Posted by Kevin D. Hendricks | Filed under: Creativity
Good magazine has a bizarre story of Detroit residents drawing attention to abandoned houses by painting them blaze orange. The city calls it trespassing but the group, Object Orange, says they're drawing attention to buildings that unless torn down will become havens for drug deals, prostitution and more.
Talk about a creative way to draw attention to a cause. But a picture (or a video) is worth so much more than words:
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