Compassion Fatigue
Online or in-store, any day in October you’ll see pink lids, pink logos and pink symbols, all supporting the worthy breast cancer cause.
This celebration of pink at first seems like a winning equation for both brands and nonprofits. But is too much of a good thing too much?
Take a walk down any street in America and notice how many people just aren’t wearing the yellow Lance Armstrong Foundation “Live Strong” bracelets any more.
Instead you’ll see red, the new love color of the day, thanks to Bono’s creation of Project Red.
What’s the deal? Are pink and yellow out and red in?
Probably, but red won’t be in for long if we don’t change the way we market causes.
So many causes, supported by so many brands, confuse consumers.
So they support nothing.
This support-nothing attitude is called compassion fatigue.
Consumers are desensitized and exhausted by all the marketing. This makes them actually less likely to buy your product or shop in your store because it’s tied to a cause. Ouch.
Is it possible your cause programs may actually be undermining your company’s success with consumers over the long term? You bet.
But there are ways to combat compassion fatigue.
The key is to recognize that it exists and go beyond the norm by finding ways to be more meaningful to your consumers.
HAND OVER CONTROL
Consumers are in the driver’s seat, so hand them the keys and give them the tools to take control.
Create programs with them in mind. Use the cause to connect the brand to them.
American Express did this with the “Members Project” and, according to Belinda Lang, vice president of consumer marketing at AmEx, who spoke at the Cause Marketing Forum in June, it worked like gangbusters.
Instead of telling their card members what cause program they were going to participate in, they invited consumers to pick the cause or issue AmEx should support.
AmEx received over 9,000 ideas in the six weeks the promotion ran, had 1.6 million unique visits to its Web site and saw a tremendous increase in its refer-a-friend program.
CONNECT EVERYWHERE
Be everywhere your consumer is.
Find ways to be more relevant to them in their digital lifestyle.
Connect to your consumers’ needs through relevant insertion of your brand and the cause into their online social communities.
Give them something to talk about. You.
These days, marketers should be spending one-third of their marketing budgets online creating blogs, viral content, widgets, personal homepages and more.
BE UNEXPECTED
Surprise your consumers by taking your program in a different direction.
Turn consumers onto your brand and the cause by giving them the opportunity to easily make a difference.
Crate & Barrel did just that with its DonorsChoose.org gift certificates program.
Crate & Barrel’s Director of Marketing Kathy Paddor said at the Cause Marketing Forum that instead of asking consumers to buy before donating funds, it simply thanked customers.
The company sent 3.6 million gift cards to thank customers for shopping at its stores and invited them to make a predetermined donation to DonorsChoose.org, a nonprofit group that funds projects for needy school teachers nationwide.
This shift in the paradigm paid back, as customers spent 15% more at Crate & Barrel in the six months following the promotion.
Melissa Radin is a principal and strategist at PowerPact Holdings. She can be reached at [email protected].
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