There's a Bracelet for That

Yellow bracelet - LiveSTRONG.
Red bracelets - AIDS.
Pink bracelet - Breast Cancer.

The list goes on covering the rainbow, a glowing example on every person’s wrist of how cause marketing has exploded across the US. This explosion of bracelets, specialty items, and knowing a certain % of proceeds goes to a specific charity is a good thing. Cause marketing has led to non-profit organizations getting more funds to fuel their good deeds, people feel like they are contributing to a great good, and for-profit companies get to feel good too knowing they helped out and that their customers like that they did.

However, cause marketing is not the greatest thing in the world – there are some definite negatives to keep in mind.

1)The majority of people’s money is going to increase the wealth of a corporation than helping the needy. Lot’s of people don’t realize that when you buy the $49.99 t-shirt that only a small percentage of that goes to charity (think around the 2% mark). This means that while consumers think they are contributing to a good cause, what they are really doing is throwing a penny one way the rest of their cash into the pocket books of big corporations.

2)It can trick people into believing that they are being charitable thereby stopping them from making a real contribution to something. One of the main reasons many people cite for not being able to give back more, especially in the case of volunteering, is because they don’t have the time. However, if they can just throw in a RED product the next time they are shopping at Gap, then problem solved. This kind of psychological play is holding people back from giving back to their communities in meaningful ways.

3)People do not know where there money is going. This is a huge problem. When you buy a product with the appropriate color all over it, you are consenting to giving your money away to be used however an organization feels. Organizations that usually benefit from cause marketing are goliath non-profits. Allowing the organization to choose how your money is spent means you could end up financing irrelevant admin costs or a program that helps preventive care when you really wanted to help fund a program that focuses on research.

In all of the above cases, cause marketing has the ability to even further removed the consumer from the good cause/deed/program. This separation makes it harder for the non-profit to build a relationship with the consumer, meaning they lose out on any lifetime value that consumer could have given to their cause. Instead, the total lifetime value of the consumer if kept by the for-profit company, which in many cases are large corporations. For cause marketing to contribute to a better world significantly and in the long term, then the system we have now needs to change drastically.