Latest Thinking from IEG

Pepsi Refresh Still Plagued by Bad Practices
My IEG Consulting Group colleagues and I have been pleased to help hundreds of nonprofits— from UNICEF and World Wildlife Fund to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and the American Heart Assn.—generate millions of dollars in nontraditional revenue. We also have teamed with some of the world’s leading brands to value, measure and maximize their ROI on nonprofit partnerships.

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Filed under: beverage, cause marketing, social media, soft drink, backlash

AT&T Crosses a Line in Asking Nonprofits to Lobby for Merger

Politico reported last Friday on AT&T’s efforts to build support in Washington for its proposed acquisition of T-Mobile by leveraging the tens of millions of dollars it gives nonprofits.

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Filed under: cause marketing, nonprofit, strategic philanthropy, telecommunications, backlash

Corporate/Cause Partnerships You Should Know

In my last post I promised to post a list of cause marketing programs you should know. Some are one-on-one partnerships, others are corporate/umbrella programs, and others pretty much defy classification.

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Filed under: digital media, new media, nonprofit, strategic philanthropy, cause marketing

Tough Calls: Competing Priorities in Cause Marketing

What a whirlwind! The Cause Marketing Forum, held this week in Chicago, gathered 450 or so cause marketing professionals from nonprofits, corporate sponsors and agencies together to talk shop and compare notes. The event packed a lot of great content and networking into just over 24 hours. What follows are a few of my takeaways, organized by the competing industry priorities they underscored.

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Filed under: digital media, new media, nonprofit, strategic philanthropy, cause marketing

Golden Halo Award Recipients Highlight Trends in Cause Marketing

The Cause Marketing Forum (CMF) Conference is coming up and the 2011 winners of their Golden Halo Awards—eBay and DonorsChoose.org—are worthy and instructive choices. Not only do they shed obvious light on the influence of technology on cause marketing programs, their selection also points to the push for individualism by consumers engaging in cause marketing programs.

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Filed under: digital media, new media, nonprofit, strategic philanthropy, cause marketing

Look Before You Leap At That First Dollar

A few articles we recently published in IEG Sponsorship Report discuss deals that at first glance appear to offer win-win propositions, but which should be examined more closely. The common question raised in each case is: Does the revenue from the relationship justify what the property is (or might be) giving up?

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Filed under: selling, cause marketing

Attention Drivers v. Value Drivers for Cause/Marketers

Have you checked out the Dynamics of Cause Engagement study released earlier this month by Ogilvy PR and Georgetown University’s Center for Social Impact Communication? For any one in the nonprofit fundraising or cause marketing business, it provides useful insight into what Americans think are the top causes (“causes” referring, in this case, to issues or content areas rather than specific nonprofit organizations).

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Filed under: evaluation, nonprofit, sponsorship measurement, cause marketing

Three Cups of Tea or Three Card Monte? Our Continuing Need for Nonprofit Metrics

This past week, I’ve watched and read the Greg Mortenson/Central Asia Institute investigation coverage with a frown on my face. (For the CBS 60 Minutes piece, click here.) Sure, I enjoyed and admired Mortenson’s stories and work described in Three Cups of Tea and it is always uncomfortable to have the integrity of someone you admire come into sharp and pointed question. But such is life, and we will have to wait and see what comes of the ongoing investigation and debate.

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Filed under: cause marketing, nonprofit, sponsorship measurement, sponsorship ROI, backlash

The Importance of Authenticity: Key Learnings from IEG’s Return on Engagement

After taking a few days to digest all of the presentations at our annual sponsorship conference, it dawned on me that the key buzzword and theme for this year’s conference was “authenticity.” Nearly all sessions that I attended made at least some reference to the importance of a partnership being genuine. This extends to how a company showcases its core business attributes, as well as its CSR efforts, which are highly valued by an organization and its employees and a core aspect of the company’s culture.

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Filed under: guidelines, IEG conference, telecommunications, trends, cause marketing

Livestrong Sporting Park: Nice, but not a Big, New Idea

The deal between MLS team owner Sporting K.C. and Livestrong to make the cancer-fighting foundation the naming rights sponsor of the new soccer stadium opening in June is certainly commendable. However, it is neither unprecedented, nor the best example of this type of partnership between a sports property and a nonprofit.

Those that have come before include:

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Filed under: cause marketing, naming rights, nonprofit, pro sports, trends, valuation, venues, what is sponsorship, assets