Key Takeaways from the 2012 Cause Marketing Forum Conference – Article 4 of 4

Inspiring Impact

Although this year’s Cause Marketing Forum conference was my first, I am not new to the concept of cause marketing.  Early in my advertising career, businesses often mistook cause marketing for placing PSA’s and donating items for nonprofit auction baskets.  Today, as the Director for Incite St. Louis, I understand our business means more.  It means leveraging our media assets to forge fully-integrated cause marketing campaigns.  It means fostering mutually beneficial relationships between advertisers and non-profits to make a positive impact in our community.  It could even mean bringing cause into every campaign that you develop.  Every campaign can have an imbedded marketing element.  You just need to be constantly innovative in your thinking.  These are two very important messages I learned from the 10^th annual Cause Marketing Forum conference.

Speaking of innovation, I truly enjoyed listening to Anne Weaver, Senior Manager, Integrated Marketing Content of Coca-Cola North America speak about the success of the Coca-Cola/World Wildlife Fund campaign (http://www.worldwildlife.org/who/media/press/2011/WWFPresitem24592.html). She spoke of innovative campaign tactics such as using the image of a polar bear with thumbprints, which initiated a call to “text to donate” to the World Wildlife Fund.  Coca-Cola pledged to donate $1 for each text message to the World Wildlife Fund.  I left the break-out session asking myself, “How can I replicate this tactic?”  Through this campaign I learned that great campaigns do not happen overnight.  Sometimes they can take up to a year of planning.  Be patient.

How do we inspire people to take action?  Some of my key takeaways from the conference included:

1. Using emotion in messaging.
2. Supporting a cause is a social act.
3. Small works are better than big.
4. One works better than many.
5. Cultural values trump reason.

This conference was both a way for me to network with others and grow in my knowledge of how to make an impact in others lives through cause marketing partnerships.  I left better understanding what a genuine relationship looks like between cause marketing partners.  I left realizing that we should never forget the “co” in communication.  At its most fundamental, cause marketing is about making people’s lives better.

Libby Nolan
Incite - Social Impact Marketing
Cause Marketing Director, St. Louis