Leveraging Your Green Message Through Cause Marketing Programs

During our Green Marketing Tips webinar last week, some questions came up on cause marketing. More specifically, attendees were curious to learn how cause marketing can help a small or medium business, and how it can be used to communicate their environmental values.

Defining Cause Marketing
Cause marketing refers to a type of marketing involving the cooperative efforts of a business and a non-profit organization for mutual benefit. Although the term is sometimes used more broadly, it generally refers to any type of marketing effort for social, environmental and other charitable causes.

According to CauseMarketing.ca, well over $1.4 billion is spent on cause marketing in North America, and it provides over $4 billion of marketing support for causes annually. Cause marketing is also becoming increasingly popular, growing over 65% in the past three years.

Well, this is not surprising. On a recent Cone Millennial study on cause marketing, 89% of Americans aged 13 to 25 would switch from one brand to another of a comparable product (and price) if the latter brand was associated with a “good cause.” The same study also indicated that a significant percentage surveyed would prefer to work for a company that was considered socially and environmentally responsible.

Cause Marketing and Green Marketing: The Perfect Match
Many green businesses face the same dilemma: How can I position myself as a green business without being accused of greenwashing? This is particularly true for small businesses, who typically don’t have the funds to pursue green certifications. The answer? Cause marketing.

Cause marketing will provide you with that third-party association so critical to build transparency into your brand. Similarly to what happens with green partnerships, by leveraging cause marketing you will be perceived as an organization that cares for the environment, and you’ll be associated with a non-profit that is doing great things to protect our planet. Suddenly, it’s not just your marketing people telling your clients how green and great you are – it’s a neutral, renowned non-profit that is giving you the stamp of approval.

A great example of a green marketing campaign leveraging cause marketing is last year’s partnership between Sprint, Samsung and Nature Conservancy. Together they came up with a cause marketing campaign that mitigates some of the usual concerns regarding green marketing: that these campaigns typically incentivize and reward the purchase of more stuff (stuff that might be useful for a while but eventually ends up in a landfill somewhere).

To this end, Sprint gave $2 to the Nature Conservancy for the sale of each Samsung Reclaim phone and messaging device. To mitigate green concerns, the phone was made from 80% recyclable materials and its packaging was fully recyclable as well. It was the first phone sold in the U.S. whose casing was made partly with bio-plastics.

The guaranteed minimum donation was $250,000, but the campaign was so successful that it achieved the maximum donation of $500,000. Nature Conservancy is now using the donation for its ‘Adopt an Acre’ program.

eBay is also leveraging cause marketing to promote its green message. Read about eBay’s cause marketing campaign and its partnership with Hearst at whatgives.com.

The Bottom-Line
Cause marketing is a great way to communicate your social and environmental values, and it works. But how can small businesses – with their challenging budgets – leverage this marketing trend? I’ll be writing about this next week. Share your thoughts below or send me an email.

Recommended reading:
Get involved in your community
What is a sustainable brand?
Green claims: with a little help from our clients