The launch of an innovative community website celebrating the Presidency and legacy of John F. Kennedy has our interests piqued – as an example of cause-related marketing and online community building… With the site launching today, we’re eager to watch how it will build engagement and inspire action.
According to a study mentioned in a recent emarketer article, “in 2009, large majorities of consumers wanted a variety of opportunities to support brands that were active in cause marketing, and by July 2010 they were even more enthusiastic about ways companies could get involved.”
We’ve noted previously that more and more brands are attempting to feed this national moral hunger through cause-related marketing efforts, and to that end, many are building awareness of such efforts through social media.
A perfect example is Kraft Foods.
A trend our team has witnessed for the past nine months is the growing prevalence of cause-related marketing efforts from financial services institutions. A recent article on Slate.com focuses on American Express’s most recent “dogooder” initiative, the American Express Members Project.
Without question, these efforts are in part attempts by banks and other financial institutions to generate some goodwill after being publicly flayed by consumers, the press, the federal government, state governments and on and on. But it is also related to what Katherine Fulton, president of the Monitor Institute” labels “Moral Hunger,” a nationwide uptick in empathy summed up this way by our own Paige Fleury:
What was a society of consumption, collection and live-for-today is now a more pragmatic, empathetic and forward-looking group whose behaviors from spending and saving to brand choice and outlook add up to a new moral hunger - a desire to do good.