All Cause is Local – Just Follow Ronald McDonald!

All Cause is Local – Just Follow Ronald McDonald!

I know that I wrote an earlier column on the “all cause is local theme.” Even so, the subject is so important to cause marketing that I don’t want to miss this opportunity to reinforce the point.

In Roy Bergold: Tales from McDonald’s, he offer some very interesting points on cause marketing.

As we’ve discussed in previous posts, all cause marketing takes action locally. I love Roy’s comments on Ray Kroc’s belief that companies, especially retailers, need to give back to their communities.

To get started on your own cause-marketing program, you need to remember three very important facts.

Here are three important steps from Roy. While they are written from the perspective of a company rather than the charity, they remain valid. And, if you want to recruit a corporate partner, it is important for the charity to think from the perspective of the company.

First, the cause must be relevant to the consumer. It doesn’t do any good to try to convince him/her to support a national day of straightening paper clips if he just doesn’t care about the plight of paper clips. You have to be able to support what he wants to help.

Second, your company must truly care about the causes you are supporting. You must talk about them, be visible with them, and work at it yourself. You can’t just give money and leave for Aruba.

And third, you must recognize the value of the program you are in and fully commit to it. Cause marketing is not a short-term proposition. You will significantly improve customer loyalty and sales, but it is for the long term. Most projects you will be involved with will take time. The local PTO will convince its members to eat with you because you are directly supporting their efforts to provide a computer lab for the school district. This does not mean donating one used Mac SE/30. And new athletic equipment does not mean two pairs of shoes and a lacrosse stick. You are in it for the long haul, and you should be.

How do you get going? There are companies that do this sort of thing for the quick-serve industry. It can all be as simple as signing up and determining what percentage of sales you can give. The customer simply goes to a website, registers, and selects the local cause he wants to support. Then you give him a receipt when he buys, he goes back on the website, enters his receipt number, and the company sends the money to the cause. One thing you must do is market the fact that you are doing this. Get out to the service clubs, schools, the Humane Society, anyone with a large number of members, and tell them about your new service for the community. You have to blow your own horn—in a nice way, of course. I find this to be particularly successful with schools as budgets are cut every time the sun rises on these poor folks. Teachers should not have to use their personal funds for paper and crayons. And I, for one, don’t need any more magazines, enchiladas, or frozen cookie dough.
Seriously review these three points. Develop your potential partners. Recruit them. Get started!