Cast Your Vote For Cause Marketing at Regal Cinemas

Americans have a big polarizing vote coming up soon and pundits have been weighing in with their opinions, informed and not. Much depends on what the nation’s voters pick; will they go for red or blue?

Frozen fruit drinks, that is.

Starting today at polling locations at 520 Regal Movie theaters in 37 states, when you buy a medium or large cherry frozen fruit drink, the company will make a $0.50 donation to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.

Buy a blue or any other color of frozen fruit drinks and Regal will donate $0.50 to Boys and Girls Club of America. The total donation to both causes is capped at $600,000. The promotion runs from Wednesday, August 1, 2012 to Friday, August 31, 2012. Weekly vote totals will be tracked on Regal’s Facebook site.

Regular readers know that I generally dislike these kinds of competitions that pit charity against charity. Most Americans like to think that what Peter Drucker used to call the 'Social Sector' is just one big happy family working to make the world a better place. And even if that’s not exactly true, it is the case that we’re all better off when respectable and effective charities like St. Jude and Boys and Girls Clubs are fulfilling their missions and have the resources to do so.

So pitting them against one another typically strikes me as self-defeating for the sponsor, even in the case of high-falutin’ campaigns like Pepsi Refresh or American Express Member’s Projects.

But I like this promotion, called the Regal Straw Vote, because it injects a healthy dose of levity into two things that are too often deadly earnest; politics and charity fundraising.

Bravo, Regal.

Comments

Part 2: How Chili's Used Cause-Related Marketing to Raise $8.2 million for St. Jude

[Bloggers Note: In this second half of this post I discuss the nuts and bolts of how Chili's motivates support from its employees and managers and how St. Jude 'activates' support from Chili's. Read the first half here.] How does St. Jude motivate support from Chili’s front line employees and management alike? They call it ‘activation’ and they do so by the following: They share stories of St. Jude patients who were sick and got better thanks to the services they received at the hospital. Two stories in particular are personal for Chili’s staff. A Chili’s bartender in El Dorado Hills, California named Jeff Eagles has a younger brother who was treated at St. Jude. In both 2005 and 2006 Eagles was the campaign’s biggest individual fundraiser. John Griffin, a manager at the Chili’s in Conway, Arkansas had an infant daughter who was treated for retinoblastoma at St. Jude. They drew on the support Doug Brooks… the president and CEO of Brinker International, Chili’s parent co...

Cause-Related Marketing with Customer Receipts

Walgreens and JDRF Right now at Walgreens…the giant pharmacy and retail store chain with more than 5,800 stores in the United States and Puerto Rico… they’re selling $1 paper icons for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF). This is an annual campaign and I bought one to gauge how it’s changed over the years. (Short list… they don’t do the shoe as a die cut anymore; the paper icon is now an 8¾ x 4¼ rectangle. Another interesting change; one side is now in Spanish). The icon has a bar code and Jacob, the clerk, scanned it and handed me a receipt as we finished the transaction. At the bottom was an 800-number keyed to a customer satisfaction survey. Dial the number, answer some questions and you’re entered into a drawing for $10,000 between now and the end of September 2007. I don’t know what their response rate is, but the $10,000 amount suggests that it’s pretty low. Taco Bell’s survey gives out $1,000 per week. At a regional seafood restaurant they give me a code that garner...

An Interview with Cause-Related Marketing Pioneer Jerry Welsh

Jerry Welsh is the closest thing cause marketing has to a father. In 1983 after a number of regional cause-related marketing efforts, Welsh, who was then executive vice president of worldwide marketing and communications at American Express looked out his window in lower Manhattan at the Statue of Liberty. The Statue was then undergoing a major refurnishing, and in a flash Welsh determined to undertake the first modern national cause marketing campaign. I say modern because almost 100 years before in January 1885, the Statue of Liberty was sitting around in crates in New York warehouses because the organization building the pedestal ran out of money. And so Joseph Pulitzer, the publisher of the newspaper called The World , proposed a very grassroots solution reminiscent in its own way to Welsh’s cause-related marketing. Pulitzer ran an editorial promising he would print the name of everyone who donated even a penny. Sure enough pennies, along with dimes and nickels, quarters a...

Cause Marketing

Search This Blog