Recently, as I reached for a can of Campbell's vegetable soup on the grocery store shelf, I was surprised to see that certain cans, instead of showing a colourful photo of alphabet-pasta goodness, sported the stark, black slogan "Help Hunger Disappear." Campbell's, it turns out, is a sponsor for Hunger Awareness Day, which has the goal "to raise awareness about the solvable problem of hunger in Canada." The program also encourages people to make donations to their local food banks: either in the form of cash, or in the form of non-perishable food items – like, say, cans of Campbell's soup.
This is "cause marketing": a mutually beneficial relationship in which a for-profit company cooperates with a non-profit organization or charity to raise awareness and/or donations for a specific cause. For the non-profit group, the main benefit is usually a promotional campaign that it couldn't begin to afford on its own. For the business, the benefits include positive public image, improved customers relations and what Wikipedia calls "additional marketing opportunities" – in other words, the chance to sell more products.
Nowadays it seems that every major brand is attached to a cause of some sort – either through a previously existing charity or through a campaign they have created themselves. Sometimes the cause somewhat reflects the company's business: for example, when Old Navy launched its new line of pet products in the US, $1 from each online purchase went to the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. The Starbucks Foundation supports social development projects that help the communities that produce the coffee, tea and cocoa that the company sells.
Some brands have been doing cause branding for so long that they are almost inextricably linked with their causes – like Jerry Lewis and muscular dystrophy. The Body Shop positioned itself as an opponent of animal testing and supporter of environmental causes almost from its beginning. MAC cosmetics started its VIVA glam campaign in support of people with AIDS and HIV in 1994. And it's hard to imagine now where the families of children with cancer used to stay before the many Ronald McDonald Houses were built.
Do consumers buy into cause marketing? Studies show that, generally, they do. According to the 2010 Cone Cause Evolution Study, published by Cone LLC of Boston, fully 85% of American consumers have a more positive image of a product or company when it supports a cause they care about. This is known as the "halo effect": the phenomenon of the altruistic and socially responsible reputation of a charity or social cause spreading to the company supporting it.
Given the positive reaction of consumers, cause marketing is unlikely to go away any time soon. According to Cone's study, 88% of Americans feel that it is acceptable for companies to involve a cause or issue in their marketing. Forty percent of survey participants stated that they have bought a product because it was associated with a cause – twice as many as in 1993 – giving companies a huge incentive to keep pursuing this marketing angle. And it's a happy coincidence for marketers that two extremely desirable consumer segments are driving the positive perception of cause marketing: "Millennials," who are still young and have many buying years ahead of them, and "Moms," who control household purse strings.
But what about those 12% of consumers who aren't happy with cause marketing? Blogger Kristen Ivie of the Case Foundation, says that some of them are feeling a little queasy about the whole concept. They don't like the idea of large, wealthy corporations using needy causes to sell products and buy consumer love – especially since the amounts most corporations actually donate are extremely small compared to their overall profits. Some critics accuse cause-related buying as being another form of "slacktivism" – a term which describes activities that make people feel that they are actively supporting a good cause but which actually requires little or no effort. For "slacktivists," actually sending a cheque to a charity is too much work – but they are happy to buy a product with a cause label on it.
One area of cause marketing is experiencing a particularly big backlash. October is Breast Cancer Month, and it seems that every year there are more and more items bedecked in pink ribbons and stickers that we are called upon to buy so that a few cents can be donated to - more or less - legitimate cancer research organizations. Some of these products contain ingredients that are believed to actually cause cancer – this has come to be called "pinkwashing," and many consumers, especially those who have survived the disease, are saying "enough!"
In 2002, in response to growing concern about pinkwashing, the Breast Cancer Action (BC Action) advocacy group launched the "Think Before You Pink" campaign, which encourages shoppers to find out where the money goes before they buy. BC Action successfully went after Yoplait and Dannon, the yogurt manufacturers, and their pink campaigns, when it discovered that the yogurt was made with milk from cows treated with bovine growth hormone, which has been linked in some studies to breast cancer. Both companies later stopped using milk with the hormone in response to consumer demands.
In 2010, several "pink" campaigns came under fire: Samantha King, author of "Pink Ribbons, Inc.", a book which looks at the co-opting of breast cancer by advertising, has drawn attention to the KFC "Buckets for a Cure" campaign in the US, and the Ultramar gas station campaign in Quebec. King is quoted in an article on CTV.ca as saying that "KFC sells products that are salt- and fat-laden, and injected with hormones, and they are the subject of a lawsuit in California about a potential carcinogen that they use in the processing of their chicken." She also cites studies that have linked air pollution to breast cancer – meaning that buying more gas is not going to help.
Like BC Action, King encourages consumers to ask questions before they buy "pink" products:
- How much money goes to breast cancer research? The Yoplait campaign mentioned above guaranteed 10¢ for each pink yogurt lid mailed in – meaning people would have to eat 100 yogurts to generate a $10 contribution, and pay for the stamp the mail them.
- Related to the above, does buying the product guarantee a donation, or does the consumer have to jump through hoops to make it happen?
- What organization will receive the funds?
- Is there a maximum amount that will be donated? In some cases the donation is "capped" so the amount given to the non-profit doesn't increase with the number of products sold. A Time.com article by Stacie Stukin states that, in 2009, Cartier promised to donate $30,000 to the Breast Cancer Research Foundation from the sales of a pink-ribbon watch – but since the watch retails for $3,900, the donation could be generated by selling only eight watches. Everything beyond that was profit.
- And – a key question – is the company doing everything it can to ensure that its products don't contribute to breast cancer?*
Comments generated by online pinkwashing articles indicate that some consumers are unhappy with the sea of pink pervading our store shelves – either because they're feeling gouged, because they believe that money is better used if it is donated directly to a charity, or because they resent the fact that breast cancer gets so much more attention than other cancers. But others take a more sanguine view – the system may not be perfect, they say, but it's better than nothing.
The fact remains that consumers do generate millions of dollars for charities by buying products linked to cause marketing. That's good news for non-profits. Partner companies boost their sales, improve their reputation, and increase employee morale and recruitment. That's good news for them. And consumers? Surely it can't be a bad thing if buying a product we already want will generate income for a deserving cause. As usual, though, we have to be willing to do the hard work to figure out whether or not that's really happening. Even for cause-related products, the old adage is still true: Let the Buyer Beware.
For another perspective on the commercialization of breast cancer, read this essay by Hana Taiji, a second-year university student majoring in social anthropology.
* Cancer-causing ingredients can be insidious – and can even be overlooked by cancer agencies themselves. At a recent "Look Good, Feel Better" evening sponsored by the BC Cancer Agency in Vancouver, participants were thrilled to leave with a gift of $200 worth of cosmetics from companies such as Clinique, Mary Kay, and Estee Lauder. However, when one woman checked the products against a list provided by the David Suzuki Foundation, she found that almost every one contained ingredients cited as cancer-causing agents.