Cause Related Marketing Done Right

Lot's of companies dabble in cause related marketing.  Often, they'll make a donation in your name when you make a purchase (dirty little secret:  it's often money they were going to donate to a charity anyway).  But, very often, the customer isn't very engaged and the cause is only a veneer covering old fashioned promotion.  

Hawaii's Foodland Supermarkets just launched a cause related marketing program that should not only boost sales, but it will engage its customers and could actually change behavior for a cause that Foodland is interested in:  increasing the consumption of locally grown food. 

Several elements distinguish this from a run-of-the mill cause related marketing program. 

First, they ask customers to "take the pledge" to eat local at least once a week.  To take the pledge, you have to go to the Foodland website (customer engagement) and register ... and by registering, you are rewarded by getting double loyalty points on locally grown and produced products.  Engagement and reward.  Don't they go together well?!

Secondly, there is a very specific call to action.  On Tuesdays (a light shopping day) Foodland will have special offers and demonstrations in store.  So, the program is actually designed to build traffic. 

Finally, the customer is further engaged through the offering of recipes, discounts and videos on the Foodland website. 

Cause related management has its own acronym:  CRM.  Oddly enough, CRM stands for another important marketing concept:  customer relationship management.  In this innovative program, Foodland handles both. 

Hey Verta Loc! I Can't Find My Time Zone!!

"Verta Loc" (a back brace device) spent a bunch of money to place a full page broadsheet in the Honolulu Star Advertiser with this graphic included headlined "To get your Verta Loc please find your time zone on the map ...."

Soooo ... this ad ran in Honolulu.  And the Hawaii time zone is not on the map.  Moreover, assuming the 800 number works from Hawaii (which isn't always the case), the ad would have Hawaii residents start calling at 4 a.m.

You wonder if anyone ever checks the ads to make sure that they're relevant to the market.  And you wonder if people have yet figured out that Hawaii became a state in 1959. 

Customer Service Nightmare - Fake Service Animals

I recently stayed in a hotel where, during breakfast service, a guest brought not one but two large dogs into the dining room.  Each was on a leash and each had a vest indicating that they were "service animals."  They didn't seem to be trained (not even garden variety obedience training).  The problem is: anyone can go online and "register" and animal (and buy a vest) without any requirement to prove that the animals indeed meet the definition of service animal. 

The Americans with Disabilities Act defines service animals very broadly:

A service animal is any dog that is individually trained to do work or perform tasks for the benefit of an individual with a disability, including a physical, sensory, psychiatric, intellectual, or other mental disability.

 Further ...

 Service animals are defined as dogs that are individually trained to do work or perform tasks for people with disabilities.

The problem is that there is no verification requirement and, as a result, people are scamming the system, buying fake vests for Fido so that Fido's owner can flagrantly disregard the "no pets" rule at most consumer establishments.

The problem for front line service employees is that it is unlawful to bar a bona fide service animal from an

Order this Vest Online

establishment.  The business could easily be sued if a person with a genuine disability was barred in error.  So, the quiet hotel breakfast I expected was disrupted by a selfish scofflaw with two untrained animals in tow.

I suppose this trend is yet another example of consumers feeling entitled to write their own rules.

Maybe it's time for the government to tighten up the definition of "service animal."

In the meantime, the challenge for businesses is to train front line employees to identify the fake service animals without denying services to disabled customers.

It's a tough one.    

WestJet's Over-the-Top PR Event

This just in:  Christmas has become commercial.  It seems that Santa is all over the media shilling everything from cars to breath mints.  It's easy to see how the "magic" of Christmas can be lost in the marketing noise.  But if it's done right, a Christmas promotional event can create goodwill and build a brand.

WestJet - a Canadian cariier - creatively tapped into the spirit of giving (and savvy use of technology) to surprise a planeful of holiday travelers.  Click here to see a video of how they gathered a Christmas wish for each of the passengers on a WestJet flight and scrambled to deliver their wishes upon landing.  The video, posted on YouTube, has generated forty million views so far.

I don't know what the promotion cost, but if they spent $100 on each of the passengers, the total for the prize budget would be $15,000 - not out of line for a promotional event.  And for that I believe they got a lot of goodwill (and at least forty million views of the video).

The downside?  You can't do a "surprise" every year.  The cat is out of the bag.  We'll have to see what they come up with in 2015 to top this very creative promotion.

Hawaii has "The Curse of a Strong Brand" ... What to do?

I recently spoke at the Heritage Tourism Conference in Hawaii ... talking about why the destination needs to move beyond Mai Tais and Sun tans and promote its heritage and culture.  Here's a video of the presentation given by my and Dr. Jerry Agrusa of Hawaii Pacific University on the subject. 

(Ignore the fact that I was mis-identified as Peter Shaindlin, the Chief Operating Officer of the Halekulani Hotel).

Click here or on the image to watch the video.

The Death of Marketing as We Know It

Pelin Thorogood just posted a great article on the Cornell Enterprise blog titled ...

The Birth of “Customer 2.0”
and the Death of Marketing As We Know It:

Adapting Marketing to Changing Customer Behaviors and Demands

(click above to see the whole article).

The article is highly relevant (and recommended!).

When a newspaper once erroneously reported the death of Mark Twain, he immediately wired them with the message "the reports of my death are highly exaggerated."  The implied "death of marketing" is certainly exaggerated.  The death of "marketing as we know it" is spot on, though.  

Like any discipline, marketing is subject to Darwin's law of evolution:  adapt or die.  I'm sure that when radio came on the marketing scene there were those who said it was the death of marketing as we know it.  Ditto for television.  Ditto the internet.  In fact when Gutenberg invented movable type, I'm sure that there were monks huddled over their illuminated manuscripts lamenting the "death of publishing as we know it."  

While the conventional wisdom ... the things we "know" about marketing ... change constantly, the fundamental philosophy of marketing does not.  Marketing is about creating value for the customer and the brand by providing a benefit or solving a problem.  Movable type, radio, television and the internet changed the way we communicate, but not the basic idea of communication.  The exciting thing about marketing with the birth of "customer 2.0" is the power that the consumer now has ... and how that better enables the creation of value.

What is changing in a big way is the way we relate to the newly empowered customer.  These days, it is less about finding and connecting with the customer ... and more about enabling the customer to find and connect with us.  Marketers ignore this tectonic shift at their peril.  

Thorogood cites Marsall McLuhan's famous declaration the "the medium is the message."  That was true for movable type, radio, television, the internet and every advancement in technology.  The message about the rise of "customer 2.0" means that old assumptions about marketing tactics are, indeed, dead.  But the changes we're seeing give rise to an era when we can use marketing in a brand new way to do what it always set out to do:  create value for the customer by providing benefits or solving problems.  

Uncommon Common Sense (Once Again)

With the seemingly uncontrollable outbreak of the ebola virus in Africa, the media in the United States has been focused on the story.  One outcome from the presence of the disease has been an emphasis on sanitation procedures and training in U.S. hospitals.

I recently had the occasion to visit someone in the hospital and discovered prominent placards in the entry

and in the elevators informing visitors of the symptoms of ebola and advising them to seek medical help if they displayed the symptoms and had been out of the country in the last few weeks.

The only problem:  the placards were in English and Spanish.  That's ok as far as it goes.  But in Guinea, one of the countries in the epicenter of the outbreak, and in Cote D'Ivoire nearby, the predominant language is French.  Common sense says: check out the basics on how best to communicate with your target audience.