As the first of two articles looking at CauseFusion as the next frontier to CauseMarketing, this article provides the context as to where your organization and brands sit on the doing-good and doing well spectrum of impact.
Having spend 50% of my career in commercial entities and 50% in non-profit, I have developed a keen sense of being able to sniff out ‘doing good’ initiatives that are authentic, vs those that are not. In the space of ‘doing good’ brands have a lot of options these days but the #1 rule, always, is authenticity.
Cause Marketing when done well can benefit a commercial entity with improvements in brand attraction, brand loyalty, consumer loyalty, employee engagement, employee loyalty, and stakeholder engagement. Most importantly, it can really move the needle for the associated cause in terms of awareness, donations, filling resource gaps and building social capital. Cause Marketing can also backfire, when it is a campaign designed around short-term outcomes, where the brand-cause fit doesn’t pass the BS test. One area of our purpose-driven work with companies at PurposeFused is connecting them with causes but we take it one step beyond Cause Marketing, to what we call Cause Fusion. Our next article explains how it works. First, the context.
Firstly, choose where you want to sit on the Doing Good, Doing Well Impact matrix:
PurposeFused Doing-Good & Doing-Well, Impact Matrix, 2021
Across the spectrum of doing good, companies have historically chosen one of three primary approaches to choose from (refer to model above):
1) Philanthropy – the longest standing and most traditional vehicle usually underpinned with general donation and give back programs;
2) CSR – the approach from the 2,000s of starting to integrate doing good into the corporate infrastructure. CSR programs tend to build upon donations with volunteering, employee engagement, matching programs, events and campaigns.
3) Shared Value – coined by Michael Porter in 2011, Shared Value has been a rapidly growing field of companies seeking to integrate doing good at the core of the company, in a way that can drive competitive advantage and generate economic returns. The simplest examples of these types of programs at the buy-one, give one companies like Toms, but over the last 10 years, we have seen the emergence of thousands of new, fast growing start-ups intent of doing well and doing good, in addition to fundamental shifts in certain huge consumer brand companies (e.g. Unilever) who’s entire purpose is to make sustainability common place.
Bringing these approaches to life:
In terms of bringing these approaches to life, we see a lot of Environmental, Social and Governance strategies, along with Cause Marketing. CauseFusion is the next frontier, as we will discuss in our next article.
ESG has sprung up off the back of the Shared Value movement, as an offshoot of both CSR and Shared Value. ESG promotes the formal integration of major environmental and societal issues, into the governance of an organization (as the term ESG suggests). Often based around the integration of the United Nations’ 17 SDGs, into company policy and strategy especially with large corporations. In some instances ESG strategies seek to offset a company’s carbon footprint (SDG #13 Climate Action – in this instance, neutralizing negative impact), others may seek to promote positive change in an area related to its own DNA (e.g. SDG #3 Good Health and Wellbeing). Therefore while all ESG initiatives should be strategic and integrated operationally, they are not necessarily value enhancing.
Cause Marketing has historically been an extension of companies’ CSR campaigns, albeit in more recent years has also brought to life ESG and Shared Value approaches to doing good. Regardless of where it sits in a company, the must dos for Cause Marketing are well documented, and remain the same:
1. Carefully evaluate the fit between your company, brand and cause;
2. Understand what truly moves the needle for the cause / non-profit and what resources you can contribute to that;
3. Be transparent with your stakeholders in terms of how specifically the company is benefitting the cause;
4. Build farther for the long-term, by developing strong relationships with the cause and meaningful engagement with your broader stakeholder groups (including employees);
5. Measure and share success on both the company and cause sides;
6. Be very clear about exactly who is doing what – align, assess, adapt as you go.
We strongly recommend brands apply our PurposeFused Collaboration Model from our last article to ensure all areas of the Cause Marketing program are considered.
If you’re considering where your organization and brand sit on our impact matrix, please get in touch!