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Jim Calhoun is the CEO/Founder of Popular Media and a Silicon Valley veteran. Before founding PopularMedia, Jim was a co-founder of CustomerClick LLC, a multi-million dollar direct marketing firm whose clients include Yahoo!, UnitedHealthGroup, and ABC Television. Previously, Jim served as Vice President of Products at NetObjects, Inc. He is a graduate of the University of Missouri School of Journalism.

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Teaching Values in Viral: How To Instill Cause-Related Marketing in the Viral Space

Written on
Oct 10, 2006 
Author
Jim Calhoun  |
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Teaching Values in Viral: How To Instill Cause-Related Marketing in the Viral Space

Pick Your Partner
Now, choose the right partner or cause. Don’t just jump on the social crisis du jour: find out which causes your customers are most concerned about (chances are, their friends are concerned or sympathetic about the same causes). If you exploit an underage third-world labor pool, don’t try to whitewash your sins with a contribution to a children’s charity — it could be seen as in poor taste and lead to backlash. And in viral marketing, the spread of negative public opinion can be devastating.

Do your homework before hopping into bed with a cause. The Better Business Bureau’s www.give.org is a good starting place. Think about what the organization will contribute to the program, beyond the right to use their name. What kind of exposure will you receive in their marketing efforts? Will you be sharing sponsorship with other companies? Some of the charitable organizations that need your support the most are the least able to pay for marketing exposure: can your company find a way make the program a success?

How Much Should You Give?
Now, think about your messaging. Even if you are committing to a set amount, tying your donation to your call-to-action lets people increase their sense of personal impact by making additional purchases. Test different offers, and remember our lesson on framing: donating a penny per purchase is not the same as donating 1% of the purchase price on a $1.00 item.

While it’s tempting to “manage your risk” (read: give as little as possible), you may face consumer backlash if you’re seen as insincere or manipulative. Check out the “Golden Boob” awards, handed out to companies who have jumped on the breast cancer bandwagon for profit. You don’t want this nomination:
http://www.goldenboob.org/nominees/

At the same time, a big donations buried inside premium prices can be just as deadly if it looks like you’ve jacked up the price to bundle in the donation.

The amount you give for every purchase or dollar spent should be determined by consumer responses, not by your total commitment. Find the optimum amount, then control your total donation by limiting the length of time the campaign runs or adding fine print specifying a minimum or maximum total donation.

Make it Viral
Creating a compelling offer is only half the challenge. Now, you’ve got to make it viral.
Now here’s the good news. Viral marketing and cause-related marketing are the best combination since chocolate and peanut butter. In fact, cause-related messages can be the most viral; the ones people feel absolutely compelled — obligated, even — to share with everyone they know.

The best part? If you can dial in your campaign, participating in a viral campaign gives people the same “warm glow” we discussed earlier. The more people they tell, the more social recognition they get for supporting a good cause, the more intense the feeling. And as we’ve seen, that warm glow can be more addictive than any wrist band or tote bag.

In turn, viral messages are the best way to get people to take a cause-related action. Being asked by a friend, family member, or co-worker is the number one reason people act to support particular causes. Make it easy to pass the appeal on and the viral cycle can repeat indefinitely. Accountability is key: if your friends know that you’re the only one who isn’t supporting breast cancer research, you’re going to be a lot more motivated to buy that think pink bracelet.

Checklist for Cause-Related Viral Programs
• Tie every consumer action to a cause-related action (e.g. donate $1 for every purchase)
• Test different donation amounts and ways of framing the offer
• Use your messaging to give participants a “warm glow”
• Ask everyone to share your call-to-action with an in-process “tell your friends” prompt
• Make recipients accountable to their friends
• Gush positive recognition for participation





Reader Comments.

It is exceedingly difficult to stomach an item like this one that explains some of the thinking behind “ethical consumerism”.

This, by the way, isn’t a criticism of Mr.Calhoun, who seems to have inadvertently exposed the idea of “cause related marketing” for what it actually is, which is corrupt.

I won’t quibble with the idea that social responsibility, the latter which I understand to mean an “ethic” in and of itself that transcends and subordinates the self-centered business imperatives of the bottom line to that of the “common good”.

But, “teaching values in viral…”? Let’s have a look at what’s going on here with delusional language such as this.

First off, let’s not confuse “values” with “attitudes”. The only “attitude” made explicit in marketing is the ideology of the empire of business, which in itself is neither here nor there.

Let’s simply refuse to confuse attitudes with values, since the two of them are intractably opposed.

To be fair to Mr. Calhoun, “shopping for a cause”, as he rightly points out, “isn’t charity”. To be sure! It’s the opposite of charity.

And, double talking nonsense such as the notion that “ethical consumerism” somehow amounts to alleviating acquisitive “guilt” by trying to link it with support for a good cause — is a downright silly attitude, even from the standpoint of marketing.

“Driving virality by making it easy and socially rewarding for people to share [one's] cause-related offer with their social circle”? Hello? What planet are we on?

Public and private interest accommodations, whether the interest is publicly self serving, which is always the case in business per se; or privately self-serving, as in “feel good” charity of the kind that makes us feel better at Christmas by throwing a buck at a bum on main street, simply does not amount to the common good.

And “values”, writ large in the sense of religious, political and personal views about “what’s important” and “what matters” can never be reduced to cynical and self-serving “attitudes” such as that which, in the name of marketing, attempts to extract surplus value even from the core of the very things such as religion and politics that actually define the common good.

Corporate social responsibility stripped down to its bones, simply means that in exchange for profits derived, those who have profited “give back” to the societies that support them, in a way that most of us would likely agree amounts to the common good.

However, this business about trying to somehow invest cause related marketing with anything other than what it actually is, meaning “cynical marketing”, is useless not only in principle, but also in practice.

The reason for this is that anyone with even an ounce of common sense will quickly see through the likes of American Express and the others who would, for example, “jump on the breast cancer bandwagon”. Is that what marketing has finally become?

If such is the “attitude” toward so-called “viral marketing” in American Express, then I am sure that it and the others if its ilk, will quickly experience the kind of consumer backlash that Mr. Calhoun refers to.

Which is to say their delusional viral marketing strategies will quickly be given the boot by the public.

So much for “cause related marketing” in the viral space.

Posted by Derick Harrris | 4:35 pm on October 10, 2006.

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