A Different Kind of Cause Marketing Approach.
A major advertising industry magazine, Advertising Age, published an article on an initiative that may help redefine 'Cause' marketing.
"Earlier this month, the Toronto-based shop Reason Partners (formerly, Holmes and Lee) launched a pro bono, out-of-home campaign featuring wild animals in various states of urban homelessness: a moose sprawled across the sidewalk, a fox hiding inside a cardboard box and a polar bear resting on a park bench to educate Canadians about threats to the country's wildlife habitat and persuade them to take action to help preserve it."
Nice. But here's the interesting part:
"CBS Outdoor donated the billboards for the Toronto campaign. Each directs viewers to a website, reasonpartners.org, where they can learn more about how pollution and human behavior have affected the wildlife habitat and also how to get involved with one of six featured charities. Some of the billboards also use Microsoft Tag High Capacity Color Barcode technology so that smartphones can "snap" the barcode and go right to reasonpartners.org."
reasonpartners.org is a cause marketing initiative meant to inform people through third party sources, aggregate charities working in a common area, allow informed donors to select the charity of their choice, and buffer donors from potentially being harassed for further donations. It also presents an interesting alternative to media and corporate partners by way of promoting a cause in the broader sense, rather than partnering with a single charity. However, it’s the online social network that’s being organized which allows charities to interact with members extending the campaign well beyond traditional media flights.
Think about that. Against any major cause, there are typically many charities competing against each other for a limited amount of dollars. After you've made a donation, in most cases you have no idea what percentage is going towards the actual cause and what's going into administration. To make matters worse, they have your contact information and often follow up by harassing you for further donations. The reasonpartners.org initiative has the potential to qualify and filter charities, as well as buffer potential donors from the traditional abuses and hassles associated with cause marketing.
Furthermore, it helps media companies, who often donate their products, to bring the most important issue to light - the actual cause, rather than the internal politics and slant of any given charitable organization, potentially muddying, if not diffusing the message.
Finally, it offers involvement beyond donations for those who want to join and become a partner. The facebook group, 'Support reasonpartners.org' has already gained quite a few partners and continues to grow. The idea is to organize and engage the group in upcoming initiatives.
Although it's just getting started, it's already capturing the public's imagination. Apart from AdAge, Strategy Magazine and Media in Canada wrote about it. Microsoft blogged about it. In fact, there was a lot of blogging about the initiative - this post being one of our favorites.
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