Author: Drew Neisser

After I got my weekly dose of 24 last night, I rifled through AdAge searching for examples of Marketing for Good like Jack Bauer seeking hidden nukes. I showed little mercy for the stories on the Network TV upfront and had just passing interest for P&G’s triumphant Crest. Three quarters of the way through the issue, I struck the mother load in a special advertising section (yes, even ad sections can be good sometimes!) that featured the winners of the Cause Marketing Halo Awards.

Organized by the Cause Marketing Forum, the Halo Awards “honor outstanding companies and causes for teaming up to do well by doing good.” The Golden Halo Award honorees in 2007 included corporate winner, Whirlpool and non-profit winner First Book. Whirlpool was recognized for its on-going commitment to Habitat for Humanity, helping Katrina victims and supporting it’s “Cook for the Cure” program that has raised $5 million in the fight against breast cancer. First Book, “a highly entrepreneurial literacy organization dedicated to providing new books to children from low-income families” was recognized for the creative partnerships it built with Borders, Build-a-Bear and Universal Studio’s Cat in the Hat Challenge.

A number of other companies were recognized with Halo Awards (Colgate, Boost Mobile, Pedigree, etc) but I’d like to spend a little more time reviewing Whirlpool’s efforts.  First, it is worth noting that Whirlpool is not a newcomer to Cause Marketing having worked with Habitat for Humanity for eight years and the Susan G. Komen foundation for the last six years. For Habitat, Whirlpool has contributed over 73,000 appliances thus far and is committed to donating a refrigerator and range to every Habitat home built in the next four year!  Whirlpools commitment is instructive not just for the length of the commitment, it also illuminates important criteria for successful cause marketing efforts:

1. Relevant: What could be more relevant than Whirlpool products and a new home.
2. Meaningful: A refrigerator and a range are hugely important to the owners of a new home.
3. More than money: Whirlpool employees provide hundreds of volunteer hours to help build the homes.

Kudos to Whirlpool for showing us all how to do Cause Marketing right.

Fasten your seat belts ladies and germs, the green Vesuvius just went off. The same folks that led the ecommerce market with the idea of ebusiness and we’re among the first F500 companies to embrace the open source (Linux) movement have just announced a major green initiative to help other companies be more green. As one of the largest service companies in the world, IBM’s announcement is monumental. Here’s what they said about it in yesterday’s Wall St. Journal:

Under an initiative it has dubbed “Project Big Green,” International Business Machines Corp. plans to start a major business to help customers slash energy use in data centers that are running up ever larger electricity bills.

The business will help customers maximize energy efficiency of their computers and redesign the layout of their data centers to minimize cooling costs. In addition, IBM, which says it is the world’s biggest operator of data centers, will explain its own plans for reducing power consumption.

This is Marketing for Good on steroids. IBM is not only going “green” itself but it is also preparing to help the many thousands of business that it services go green too. According to the Journal:

IBM is training 1,000 services experts in green technology to help clients redesign their data centers and improve their efficiency.

According to materials prepared for the press event [on May 10th], IBM expects to double the computing capacity of its own data centers by 2010 without using additional energy. Under that scenario, it would avoid incurring $500 million in electricity costs.

Having twice had IBM as a client, I can assure you that when Big Blue (or should I say Big Green) gets behind an initiative like this, the full global might of this company is simply awe inspiring. To paraphrase Lou Gerstner, the elephant can indeed dance, and when it does the global forest rocks. You go Big Green.

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Staying on the lighter side for one more day, I encourage you to view this entertaining new TV spot from Travelers Insurance (Watch the ad here.). Here’s what they said about it in MediaPost‘s Out to Launch newsletter yesterday:

[The TV spot] “Luck” begins in a laboratory, aptly titled the “Rabbit’s Foot Reattachment Center.” The center reattaches rabbit’s feet to their rightful owners. The clips of rehabbed rabbits are hysterical. “You don’t need luck, as long as you’ve got the right insurance,” begins the tagline.

Of course, I have a soft spot for bunnies already and am tickled to note that we are coming up on the anniversary of Neuter Your Bunny day, a public service program Renegade developed for Panasonic Oxyride batteries. Pardon the self-aggrandizing reference here but that program was lucky enough to be recognized in BRANDWEEK’s Guerrilla Marketer of the Year issue last October. PETA hopped in with their own form of recognition giving Panasonic their Glitter Box award in 2006.  So you just gotta love the bunnies.

Every once in a while, a viral marketing idea crosses my desk that is truly inspired. Yesterday, a fellow Renegade sent me to a link with the promise that it would inspire, entertain and “pick-me-up.” Within 10 minutes of checking it out, I sent similar emails to my entirely family and a few close friends. All received it with good cheer and many forwarded it to their friends.

The beauty of this idea is its simplicity. Just put your own name before youaremighty.com (like Drew.Neisser.youaremighty.com) and you too can share in the fun. Each personalized link results in a short movie with phrases like “you can overcome any obstacle” and “you can win any game” and ends with your name emblazoned on a silhouette of Mighty Mouse. At the end of each movie is a button identifying the sponsor as JobSite.co.uk.

Though JobSite doesn’t continue the YouAreMighty messaging on its website, this little viral “webnote” is a bite sized example of Marketing for Good. It is first and foremost entertainment that made my son laugh, my wife smile and my dad marvel. My guess is this simple little viral link will soon drive thousands if not millions to the JobSite.co.uk website simply out of curiosity. That will undoubtedly be good for JobSite.

NOTE: The technology for “webnote” comes from a small company called Aninote.com who quite notably offers their products for free:

Dynamic Aninotes are dynamically generated, based on the address you enter. You can dynamically send it to anybody by just sending him or her a link. No forms need to be filled out, so you can just send it to anybody on the fly. Select a dynamic Aninote on the left menu for more detailed instructions.

Dymamic Aninotes are free, and will always be free. However, if you enjoy this service, please consider making a donation to help keep Aninote.com up and running, and more importantly, expanding!

Interesting interview yesterday with the top brass at Target in the Wall St. Journal. Target offers a text book case on how to build a brand and sustain growth via product enhancements and innovative marketing:

It keeps adding hot products, such as Smith & Hawken accessories, and is bringing in apparel by new designers from around the world. Target, which recently posted $59 billion in revenue, is about the size Wal-Mart was a decade ago, though sales at existing stores are rising at twice Wal-Mart’s rate.

Bob Ulrich, Chairman and CEO touched on how they landed on the idea of an upscale discount store:

As we pushed the parameters of the design and quality and trendiness of our merchandise, it eventually became more acceptable for more upscale people, not just in terms of income but taste level, to shop at Target. We created the whole trend of designers making products for discounters, starting with architect Michael Graves in 1999, who took his $135 teapot and recreated it for us for $35.

Ulrich also notes that innovation is not a moment in time or something you can deliver on one aisle:

These things keep evolving. You can’t just be unique in one category. You can’t be really mundane in small electrics if you’re trying to be innovative in textiles. You can’t be really forward in linens and beat down in shoes, so you have to start to get more consistency across the board.

Michael Francis, EVP of Marketing, describes how they keep fresh:

One way is through something we call The Big Idea contest. I challenge my team to solve a problem or see things a new way. We’ve done everything from what’s the next consumable product that we would like to repackage to what product in your pantry frustrates you the most. The winner gets a cash prize, recognition and sometimes we create the product or campaign.

One of the biggest barriers to innovation is fear of failure. Target’s President Gregg Steinhafel describes how his company consistently breaks down this barrier:

It’s important that we push the envelope and that we fail. I’ve described on my conference calls a number of merchandising initiatives where we pushed too far, too fast. Like domestics where we got a little out in front of ourselves with too high a thread count in sheets and too many top of bed products at high prices. We recognize that when we do fail, we make the course corrections and we don’t penalize the teams that have made these calculated risks.

The interview is well worth reading in its entirety and serves as a good reminder that innovation is rarely an accident. It takes an enlightened corporate culture in which ideas are celebrated, risk taking is rewarded and failure is forgiven. Continuous product improvement is a cornerstone of Marketing for Good. With every product enhancement comes the opportunity to help make someone’s life a little better (even if means simply saving them money) and the corresponding opportunity to create brilliant communications. Conversely, stale products rarely inspire fresh marketing. Kudos to Tar-jay for keeping it fresh.