Just 'Cause

I know it’s been a while, but I’m still intrigued by this year’s Academy Awards. It wasn’t the awards themselves that caught my attention, it was the ads. Oscar night ads don’t attract as much attention as Superbowl ads (the awards ceremony had a mere 36.3 million viewers compared to 98.7 for football). But with that much audience it has become another opportunity for advertisers to show off some of their best work. And, I noticed these ads were very different from those at the Superbowl. To me, that says the advertisers believed that different people watch each event (I happened to watch both). Or at least they expect the viewers to have different motivations.

For example, the most popular ad from this year’s Superbowl was a Doritos ad featuring two guys in an office hitting someone in the groin with a snow globe. At the Oscars, the most advertised snack was True North nut snacks (owned by the Frito Lay division of Pepsi Co). They aired mini-documentary spots about people doing good. They were great stories but I wasn’t sure what they had to do with nuts.

True North wasn’t the only one trying to increase the value of their brand by borrowing from the good work of others. Diet Coke spent a bundle on ads with Heidi Klum to promote women's heart health and the American Heart Association. I didn’t learn anything about women’s heart health and didn’t understand what it had to do with Diet Coke.

Don’t get me wrong, I am all for creating win-win promotions between corporate America and the non-profit sector, often called “cause marketing.” And, I was impressed that in this climate when so many companies are cutting back sponsorship and advertising, there was so much money being spent showcasing causes. But, I wonder what benefit these companies realized and how they justified the expense.

Cause marketing doesn’t have to involve expensive campaigns with Fortune 500 companies. Not long ago a brilliant, small-scale example appeared in my mail box. It was a mailing from The Gary Rosenthal Collection announcing the Art Tzedakah Box Contest. To decode that for you, Gary Rosenthal is an artist that produces a line of Judaic art and a tzedakah box is a coin bank for collecting money for charity. The artist is giving away $5,000 in prizes to causes based on the creativity of people who design tzedakah boxes in the shape of their cause. It’s targeted, it gets people involved with the brand, and it’s “viral.” I sent a link to this website to two people and I’m not even Jewish! It’s not just plucky artists that use this kind of approach, Virgin Atlantic gave away money to promote their launch in the Boston Market. It was not quite as creative or targeted as Rosenthal, but it was interactive and viral. I might not have even noticed Virgin otherwise. So, I think even in a tough economy cause marketing isn’t going away. Like all good marketing, it needs to be targeted and meaningful.