Does Cause Marketing Thwart Social Change?

Leah Edwards — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 17:27:13 +0000

One thing I didn’t cover last year when I wrote “How to do Cause Marketing Well” is whether cause marketing should even be done at all. But I found that a very interesting question to consider when reading “The Hidden Costs of Cause Marketing” in the Summer issue of the Stanford Social Innovation Review. Angela M. Eikenberry argues that cause marketing is “consumption philanthropy,” connecting shopping with a social good, whereas high-levels of consumption in the developed world could be hurting philanthropists’ efforts to save rain forests, fisheries, etc. And it may be counterproductive in increasing empathy for people in need and a sense of responsibility to help.

Cause Marketing Generally Works for Marketers

I’ve been a fan of cause-related marketing programs (although I typically work with smaller entrepreneurial businesses and not the Project Red and Pink Ribbon campaigns in the market). It’s clear why those of us with a marketing perspective would find a lot to love. As MC Milker wrote in our Network, consumers are interested in products tied to a cause. Since consumers respond, corporations are getting involved. Eikenberry cites IEG Inc, reporting, “Cause marketing expenditures went from almost zero in 1983 to and estimated $1.3billion in 2006″.

But for a moment, let’s think about the perspective of nonprofit organizations and fundraisers (and maybe even philosophers). Eikenberry says cause marketing “devalues the moral code of philanthropy by making virtuous action easy and thoughtless”.

Can Philanthropy Leading to Social Change?

Eikenberry is skeptical of that consumers can right the world’s wrongs. When they are buying and fulfilling their material needs and desires, “they generally have little impetus to consider…’the public good’”. She sites two studies that show that when consumers have bought a cause-branded product they are less likely to make charitable contributions and feel they have “already done their philanthropic share”. So does cause-marketing decrease or increase the amount of money going to charity? ‘hard to know, but it is definitely shifting where the money goes.

Social Entrepreneurs: How to Change the World Through Business

Leah Edwards — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 06:25:05 +0000

I love to read, but am lucky if I have time to finish even one book a month. Fortunately, I can “cheat” and listen to author interviews on the radio or via podcasts, and I just listened to an engaging interview with Pamela Hartigan, the founding partner of the yet-to-be-launched Volans Ventures and the founding director of the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship, about her new book titled The Power Of Unreasonable People: How Social Entrepreneurs Create Markets That Change the World.

The podcast is part of Stanford Social Innovation Review’s “Design for Change” series, and I recommend that you listen to it.

But if even that shortcut is too much for you, I’ll give you a couple of highlights.

Green Options » Stanford Social Innovation Review

Does Cause Marketing Thwart Social Change?

Social Entrepreneurs: How to Change the World Through Business