Doing Business Concerning Humankind: Cause Marketing
Doing Business Concerning Humankind: Cause Marketing
  • Reporter Choi Jong-hyeok
  • 승인 2015.05.06 17:33
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When companies were first established, most of them focused on profit regardless of social problems. But financial experts later began to insist that a company must create not only profit, but also values in finance and society simultaneously. Professor Mark Kramer and Prof. Michael Porter suggested Creating Shared Value (CSV) and the notion led to Cause Marketing. Marketing is a systemic management relating to the whole distribution of the product done by producer. Cause Marketing is one kind of marketing handling social issues (like depression and suicide), economic values, and public values simultaneously. That is to say, companies begin to live with society not to live alone.
Cause Marketing is a kind of marketing that has often failed to promote itself. Successful examples include Tom’s Shoes, CJ Food Ville VIPS, American Express, Roti Boy, and 1:Face Watch. The most famous example is Tom’s Shoes. Tom’s Shoes is a “kind shoes” brand that was established when founder Blake Mycoskie saw a kid who wasn’t wearing shoes hurt his foot. The founder wants to consistently provide shoes for people who cannot afford them. As a result, TOMS Shoes was established with slogan, “Shoes for Tomorrow”. The marketing of Tom’s Shoes is that if someone buys one pair of shoes for him/herself, one kid who lives in the 3rd world receives a pair of shoes. This idea makes consumer who sympathize with the idea prefer buying TOMS Shoes rather than others. Consequently, Tom’s Shoes sold tens of thousands of shoes in 2006 and over 1 million shoes in 2010. CJ Food Ville VIPS gives 1% of profit to foundation for an alienated and a poorly-fed child if VIPS No.1 stake is ordered.
Examples of failure are Domino’s Pizza and KFC. Domino’s Pizza held the 1/2 campaign as cause marketing. When people ordered Domino’s Pizza, half of the pizza was delivered to them and the other half of pizza was delivered to low-income children who studied in study room. This campaign failed for two reasons. The first reason is that Domino’s was not contributing anything. As a result, the cost of helping poor children was mostly or entirely on customers. The second reason is the timing of the marketing. When the campaign began, helping poor children was not a hot issue. What is important in cause marketing is the product should provide practical values and the cause should link society, consumers, and the company. For another instance, KFC made a campaign to support breast cancer research wtih donating 50 cents per bucket set. However, it was failed beacues people could not feel any correlation between breast cancer and chicken, which is called one of the causes of breast cancer, so they did not visit KFC to give money to breast cancer research.
Three words of warning or advice should be considered when designing cause marketing. Think about why the marketing of Domino’s failed. It is because whenever people want to help someone they still want to get similar level of profit. Next, the cause marketing must have relation between product and the donation like TOMS Shoes. Finally, the cause marketing must be an issue that consumers can sympathize with. The purpose of cause marketing is helping someone. If the marketing does not register with consumers, they do not have any reason to buy the product.