Cause Marketing

Like everyone else's kids, my twelve-year-old daughter is crazy about The Hunger Games. She devoured the book trilogy and she's been making plans for the big opening day for weeks.

I myself have been kind of indifferent to the Hunger craze. I was only grateful that there weren’t any vampires involved. But then I spotted a Hunger Games promotion that made me a fan, too.

As the poster says, the world really will be watching when this much anticipated movie hits screens. So instead of just doing the usual glamorous premieres, magazine covers, and other ways to drum up ticket sales, the film is using its fame (and its theme) to do some good in the world. Through the Facebook page, people can make a donation for food distribution by the World Food Programme,internationally or WFP and Feeding America in this country.

To further entice fans to learn more about the very solvable hunger problem, the site features a quiz that includes facts like:

• “1 in 7, or close to one billion people, go to bed hungry every night.”
•  “Hunger kills more people every year than AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis combined.”
• “There is enough food today for everyone to have the nourishment needed for a healthy and productive life. The problem is access.”

Finish the quiz—and learn an important thing or two—and you’re entered to win a signed Hunger Games poster.

To me, this is cause marketing at its best. The film not only gets its publicity, it also harnesses all that fan love to do, good work. It’s a win-win. And it’s made me—a formerly indifferent Hunger Games bystander—volunteer to chaperone seven girls to the movie on Friday night.

Not so long ago, if you wore a girdle, you didn’t want anybody to know it. Now girlfriends (including the Grand Girlfriend of them all, Oprah) love to dish about smoothing their muffin tops or rounding out their booties with sexy, slimming shapewear.

And it’s all because of Spanx.

Founded 12 years ago, Spanx sells (and sells and sells) not just because it works wonders on women’s bods, but also because it does it with winning sass, from the naughty name to the cute cartoons on the packaging.

And that’s all because of Spanx founder, Sara Blakely. Her force of nature personality, relentless work ethic, and most of all, true understanding of women, have made her a newly minted billionaire at age 41. She’s the youngest self-made woman on Forbes magazine’s “Rich List.” 

She’s also my latest girl crush. (For other strong, entrepreneurial women I admire, see my blog post on Sheryl Sandberg  and check out my mentor and founder of Brogan & Partners, Marcie Brogan.)

I love Blakely’s back story. She started Spanx with $5000 of her own money. She had an idea to improve upon control top pantyhose and had to practically storm a hosiery mill to get them to make her prototype. She wrote her own patent to save legal fees. She hand-sold Spanx at a folding table at Neiman Marcus using picture of her own disappearing panty lines and stayed up all night filling her own mail orders.  

Now that her company—which is debt-free and privately owned—has hit it huge, Blakely’s personality still charmingly infuses everything Spanx does, especially its savvy marketing. The company’s staff is dominated by women who put themselves out there as much as Blakely does. On the Spanx blog,  “The Rear View”, for instance, staffers pose for before and after photos in Spanx nipping and tucking swimsuits.  

And in a section called “Spanx-Giving,” we hear about charitable work staffers have done for organizations like the Foster Care Support Foundation’s Prom-A-Palooza.

Blakely also gives back with motivational speaking, largely aimed at women, and impulsive gifts of joy, like treating everyone in her favorite restaurant to dinner.

A cute cartoon of Blakely herself, wearing a long blond ponytail, is perched at the top of the every page on the Spanx website. It’s clear that, while her ragtag underwear company has changed immensely, Blakely has remained true to her very feminine self. And that’s the best recipe for success I can think of.

This year, my daughter turned eleven. For me, that means adding a new line item to our household budget. I’m calling it Teenage Fashion Trends that Will Last Approximately Six Minutes.

And on a more serious note, I’ve also put in a call to our pediatrician to ask about Gardasil, the Merck-manufactured Human Papillomavirus vaccine.

Given that HPV is  sexually-transmitted, it’s something I wouldn’t have considered for years. There are two reasons I’m making it happen now.

1. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that girls get three doses of the vaccine at age 11 or 12.
2. Gardasil’s powerful marketing message had me hooked years ago.

Do you remember Gardasil’s 2006 “One Less” ad campaign? 

The commercial was populated by strong, cool, real-looking young girls skateboarding, playing drums, and jumping rope. They looked straight into the camera and declared, “Each year in the U.S. thousands of women learn they have cervical cancer. I could be one less.”

The spot was strikingly natural and refreshingly forthright. It handled the politically dicey issue of vaccinating young girls for an STD with dignity and power. These girls weren’t being manhandled by their parents, the government, or their future partners. They were taking a strong stance and protecting themselves.

Subsequent ads featured mothers choosing Gardasil for their daughters and confident twentysomething women choosing the vaccine for themselves. These spots were just as moving to me. They treated their female target audience as smart, discerning, responsible consumers.

Now there’s an opportunity for a new round of Gardasil commercials. The CDC has issued a recommendation that 11- and 12-year-old boys also be vaccinated against HPV.This is great news.

 As Merck gets the new message out, I hope it doesn’t abandon the powerful, feminist tone of Gardasil’s earlier spots. After all, vaccinating boys against HPV protects both themselves and their future partners.

And even if the ads are about boys, we know that women—these boys’ mothers—are responsible for more than 80 percent of healthcare spending.

So this is my advice to Merck: When you bring men into the fold, remember those great old Gardasil commercials and don’t leave women out of the marketing.

Social media is changing the world and it’s proving itself time and again that its powers can be used for more good than evil. Exhibit A: the Bread Art Project. It’s a really simple concept with hugely impactful results. With the help of Facebook, Twitter and the like, this project has gone from an unknown to a social media sensation.

 The Grain Foods Foundation along with Food Network favorite Ted Allen (host of Chopped) are joining forces with Feeding America to provide a whopping one million pounds of food for those who need it the most. And the numbers are staggering. Hunger impacts 48 million Americans, 17 million of which are children. Most of us can’t imagine what it would be like to not be able to feed ourselves or our families.

And now, social media is being used to help feed the hungry, simply by making pieces of digital bread art. Never fancied yourself an artist? All you have to do is upload a picture of yourself, friends, pets, or any image that is important to you. If you’re a regular Picasso, you can even create your own design and the application will generate a personalized piece of bread art just for you.  For every slice of bread art, the Grain Food Foundation will donate a $1 to Feeding America. They have already raised over $21,000 for the project and it continues to grow. Bet you never thought a digital piece of bread could be so much fun or could give back to such a great cause.  What are some of your favorite causes social media has impacted?

I even tried out my art skills with a picture of me and some of my girls from Brogan & Partners. If I ever wondered what my face would look like toasted to a piece of bread…I just got my answer.