Citizen Brand

The Cause Generation

If you are between the ages of 18 and 30, then it is likely you are part of the generation that will tip the balance in moving cause and corporate social responsibility from a nice to have in business to business as usual.

Proof of this comes from the 5th Annual College Explorer Study sponsored by Alloy Media + Marketing and conducted by Harris Interactive.

Calling all brands.  Are you paying attention?

Cause is Growing

Investment in cause programs will increase more than 20 percent this year breaking the $1.3 billion mark.  That according to IEG, Inc.  Cause branding is now the fastest growing segment in the entire sponsorship arena.  Sponsorship on the whole will grow a little more than 10 percent this year.

What does this mean?  It's real simple.  More and more companies are realizing they can make better and more real connections with their customers if they are doing something to help society.  As sports sponsorships see another year of decline, it is cause branding that is picking up the slack.

As my fellow cause colleague at Selfish Giving  says: 

"If you're a retailer and don't believe me, test it out for yourself.  At one register, ask your shoppers if they can donate a dollar to help a poor, sick child.  At a second, ask them if they could spare a dollar so you can flash your company name on the jumbotron at Fenway.  Believe me, just because New Englanders love the Red Sox doesn't mean they don't think like Yankees."

Want to learn more about cause branding?  Download our white paper on the topic at www.beappr.com.

Have a great Fourth of July.  I'm heading to San Diego for a few days of R & R but will try to stay in touch.

Urban Sprouts

Urban Sprouts is a great program in San Francisco that should be emulated everywhere.  This is from their website:

"Urban Sprouts is a school garden program that serves low-income youth from San Francisco’s under-served neighborhoods. We teach youth to grow, harvest, prepare and eat vegetables from the school garden, in order to help youth become more engaged in school, eat better and exercise more, and connect with the environment and each other."

This is a great opportunity for any company involved in the food industry.  What could be better than children learning to appreciate and understand where our food comes from and learning to prepare food in a healthy and nutritious manner.

There is more information available on the Urban Sprouts blog.  Big thanks to Britt for bringing this to our attention.

Social Marketing

If you want to learn more about social marketing and how it fits into the world today, a place to be in September is the campus of UCLA and the Social Marketing University.  Thanks to Nedra for spearheading this event.

Social Marketing University

September 18 - 19, 2006
8:30 a.m. - 4:30 p.m.
UCLA Conference Center
University of California, Los Angeles
Westwood, California

Presented by Weinreich Communications
<http://www.social-marketing.com/blog/>

How do you help people adopt behaviors that will make them healthier and better off? How can you create positive social change?

At Social Marketing University, you will move beyond the usual educational approach to changing health and social behaviors. Using social marketing, you will learn how to persuade individuals to take action for change by addressing the values, needs and desires that motivate them. It's about understanding and connecting with your audience by applying the same effective marketing tools that companies like Nike and Apple use.

Join social marketing expert Nedra Kline Weinreich for this two-day training on the beautiful UCLA campus in Los Angeles. By the time you leave, you will have an effective social marketing strategy for your own program and the skills to implement it immediately.

Early registration by July 31 includes a $100 discount, and each additional person from the same organization will receive another $50 off of the registration fee.  Students also get a huge discount.

National Parks and Blueprints

What could a national park and a blueprint possibly have in common you might ask?

  The common thread is a new print public service campaign from the National Parks Conservation Association and a pro bono effort from Young & Rubicam, Chicago.  It's a great campaign that has blueprints for Yosemite Falls, the Delicate Arch and a Sequoia tree and the payoff line is "It's not like we can make new ones."

The ad campaign is a continuation of the NPCA's overall campaign to educate the public and put pressure on elected officials to recognize the deteriorating conditions of America's national parks.  The group's effort began with the release of a report in 2005 titled "Faded Glory."  If you have visited even one of our national parks, please take time to glance at this report and think about what you can personally do to convince our elected officials of this need.  If you have children, grandchildren or are contemplating having one or the other, think about what we are leaving them as a legacy if we continue to ignore our parks.

So I am renewing my mission launched in April to respectfully request that each of you make some noise about helping America's National Parks get the proper budget support they deserve.

If our elected officials can't get their act together, then we may have to resort to this idea:  corporate sponsorship of our national monuments.  Thanks to Ernie Schenck for the post.

Turning Lemons into Lemonade

There was a great reminder this past weekend that the best cause branding programs do not have to be complicated. 

By now you have likely heard about Alex's Lemonade Stand.  Alexandra "Alex" Scott is no longer with us on this earth, but she left us a lot to think about in the eight years of her life.  Before she turned one, she was diagnosed with an aggressive childhood cancer.  When she turned four in the year 2000, she decided she would set up a lemonade stand and help "her doctors" find a cure.

She died four years later, but her cause lives on and grows each and every year.  It's an incredible legacy and she has taught us all invaluable lessons about how to make a difference in the world....one cup of lemonade at a time.

In the past six years, children all over have kept Alex's dream alive by hosting thousands of lemonade stands raising money to help find a cure for children's cancer.  It's a perfect example of a citizen brand.  And it absolutely demonstrates that the best idea is a simple one.

Consider this conference

I have registered to participate in The Annual Public Innovators Summit in August.  After you read what it's about, you might want to consider participating or know someone who should. It sounds like a great weekend of exchanging ideas with people from all over the country about how to create the kind of society that produces more Citizen Brands.

The Summit is being jointly sponsored by The Harwood Institute and Fast Company magazine.  What draws me to this summit is that it is based on the correct notion that we are a "nation in retreat from politics and public life."  Consider these core values that guide The Harwood Institute.

• We believe in the innate goodness of individuals and the possibility for change.

• We seek for people to imagine and act for the public good so that we can all do the unfinished work of our communities and the nation.

• Together, we must create the conditions for people to tap their potential to make a difference and join together to build a common future.

• Our aim is to ignite a sense of possibility and hope in America.

• We must create more advocates for public life.

Sounds like our kind of folks.

Plus the location won't be too bad a place to be in August.

Lee National Denim Day

Our client, Lee Jeans, made a big announcement today regarding their signature cause branding program benefiting the fight against breast cancer, Lee National Denim Day.

Here are the details about Lee's new partnership with The Entertainment Industry Foundation.

The first ten years of Denim Day have been focused on education and awareness.  The second decade of Denim Day will focused on funding specific research projects working to find a cure to breast cancer.

It will be exciting to see where the second decade of Lee National Denim Day leads all of us who have been on this ten year journey.

Changemakers

As the big wedding day approaches for my oldest son, I have to write quickly tonight.  But I did just find a site that is worth your time to peruse over the next few days.

It's called Changemakers.  Take a look and see how they live up to the name.

Are you a changemaker?

Creative Capital

There are so many causes to support that sometimes it seems impossible to believe enough support can be found for all of them.  The needs are great in so many basic areas from health to housing to education to food.  And yet, we also need to remember the arts.

Audeamus.com points us to an incredible idea launched in New York seven years ago to support artists of all types working in all mediums.  The program is called Creative Capital and this paragraph from their website says it all:

Creative Capital supports work with the potential for significant artistic and cultural impact. We seek to act as a catalyst for the development of adventurous and imaginative ideas. We are interested in artists who are deeply engaged with their art forms and exhibit a rigorous commitment to their craft, as well as projects that transcend discipline boundaries. In particular, we look for artists who are articulate about their work and who have an understanding of the professional landscape. Creative Capital is committed to diversity in all its forms.

The Creative Capital website is also one of the best and most useful I have seen in a while.  One link takes you to the Creative Capital Channel where you can learn about many of the artists who have received grants and the work they have done.  It ranges from art exhibits at leading galleries to films that have been award winners at film festivals worldwide.  Yet another link gives artists access to professional development programs to help them in all phases of their projects.

Arts education in our schools always suffers most when budgets are cut.  If there is no support for arts as our children are growing, where will we get the next generation of artists?  We need to find ways to support programs like Creative Capital and figure out how to create more of them as soon as possible.