This is good news for socially driven businesses. Find your spot where market forces meet consumer values and start building.

This piece was originally written for and published on Reach Students.

If 94% of Millennials condone cause marketing why do only 53% report buying a product that benefits a cause in the past year?  The first finding is compelling, the second certainly is not, particularly given that in many stores you’d have to struggle not to buy cause-related products. So what explains this gap and what can your company do to close it?

The gap exists because cause marketing is predominately used by companies as a short-cut to boost product sales and consumer good-will. So we typically see cause marketing campaigns developed in a stand-alone manner, rather than as one element in support of a company’s larger social mission. Instead, companies should look to influence their selected cause or issue through deep-rooted commitments and multiple points of engagement.

“Cause-related marketing, as we know it, is dead. It’s not about slapping a ribbon on a product any longer.…Americans seek deeper involvement in social issues and expect brands and companies to provide various means of engagement,” says Carol Cone,  managing director of Brand and Corporate Citizenship at Edelman.

Genius brands like TOMS Shoes, Nike and RockCorps Orange and Boost Mobile have closed this gap by building programs around their long-term commitment to an issue and giving consumers the opportunity to participate through volunteering, advocacy and education. Many of these companies’ initiatives aren’t even tied to product purchases. They understand that creating deeper and longer-term relationship with consumers is much more valuable–in terms of products sales and brand perception, visibility, sustainability and  social impact–than an immediate cause-marketing success.

Here are 7 strategies you can use to close the gap:

1. Define your mission.
   Before you think about how to create a smashing campaign, choose a cause that means something to your brand or consumers. Then be specific about who you want to benefit and what you ultimately aim to achieve, both in affecting social or environmental change and in impacting your company.
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2. Invest in the cause longterm.
   A long-term commitment to a cause or organization helps define what your company stands for, enables a greater social impact and makes it easier for you to measure this impact. The whole idea of engaging consumers in your social mission is to take them on a journey of awareness and participation, through which they begin to associate your brand with real impact, action and commitment to good. Switching up the issues you care about confuses your message, weakens your impact and leaves consumers rolling their eyes at another ill-fated attempt to influence what they buy by way of their heartstrings.
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3. Lead with impact, not branding or splash.
   A quick way to turn off consumers and taint your brand is to use customers as a pawn in a high-on-glitz-but-low-on-impact campaign in the name of doing good. RockCorps‘ partnerships with Orange and Boost Mobile, in the United Kingdom and United States, respectively, focus on community involvement and volunteerism rather than cell phone ownership and use.  ”You can’t buy a ticket, you have to earn it,” is RockCorps’ tagline and mission. These RockCorps partnerships organize A-list concerts with a unique ticket policy: tickets can’t be bought, only earned by volunteering for several hours at a community event organized by RockCorps. This model shifts the focus to giving back to your community, rather than who can and can’t afford which phone or a ticket to hear Busta Rhymes.
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4. Be specific.
   Sixty-one percent of consumers take the time to learn the details of a corporate-nonprofit partnership before deciding whether to support it. The more specific your commitment is, the stronger the appeal. A commitment of one donated vaccine for every t-shirt purchased is stronger than a commitment of 10% of sales (how much is that?), and 10% of sales is stronger than “a portion of the proceeds.”Here’s one suggestion from a 16-year old American woman, “On the label, [there should be] a little paragraph about why the product is helping the environment and how it is made differently. That is something a new, limited-time organic Target brand did and it was very neat to know what special process went into making the clothes,” (quote taken from Alcatel Teen Lab).
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5. Connect customers to the cause.
   While 81% of consumers still want to support your company’s cause through transactional purchases they also want opportunities to volunteer for the featured cause (72%) and to provide feedback on the product or campaign (75%), per Cone Inc.’s 2010 Cause Evaluation Study. TOMS Shoes is known for its transaction-focused buy-one-give-one model.  But the company has also done an excellent job of providing customers opportunities to act, for example, through Style Your Sole shoe painting parties and annual “One Day Without Shoes” events that mobilize thousands of students to go barefoot for the day.

   Nike has partnered with Ashoka’s Changemakers to run several online competitions that challenge young social entrepreneurs to develop ways to leverage sport for positive social change. The initiative is completely independent of product purchases. By separating its commitment to sports for social change from its products, Nike is using its brand to motivate change and empower athletes and entrepreneurs. In the longterm, this visibility and consumer association could translate into product sales, but product sales are only one potential outcome–the other being social impact.
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6. Don’t exploit the cause or your consumers.
   Your cause is indicative of the impact you want to have. Don’t play fast and cheap with it, which means no pictures of abandoned dogs and ravaged children. Instead, find ways to communicate the urgency of their needs with dignity. The same is true for your consumers. When reporting on the brilliant success of your campaign, stay connected to the impact you’ve had and the ultimate change you’re determined to make, not how your campaign spiked product sales or utilized a new technology.
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7. Report on impact.
   Seventy-five percent of consumers want to hear more about the impact of corporate-nonprofit partnerships. How much money was raised and who did it help? How many people were served? How were they specifically affected?  The desire for feedback means you’ve successfully involved the customer in the cause. They feel personally connected to it and are interested to know how what they stood behind made a difference to someone. As a company, this is the best part because you’ve created a unique opportunity for an individual, or a million individuals, to make an impact.

Benevity Social Ventures and Obopay recently launched a text-to-donate service that aims to simplify and incentivize mobile giving. Software company Benevity (I’ve profiled iStock Photo’s use of the Benevity platform to power micro-donations) partnered with mobile payment provider Obopay to create a service with enough incentives that it might create the tipping point.

Here’s the potential for companies:

• It can easily be integrated into a cause marketing or loyalty campaign. When deciding between Prego and Ragu, I can follow a prompt on Prego’s label that encourages me to make a donation (then share it on social media) and then offers me a coupon or product incentive.
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• It enables companies and nonprofits to partner on full-feature campaigns that go beyond a mobile-only component because it integrates with Benevity’s suite of services that support mico-donations, employee giving and cause-related campaigns. A typical challenge of mobile fundraising is that it’s offered as a stand-alone program, which limits its appeal to consumers, as well as companies and nonprofits.
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• Companies can create a branded portfolio of causes, grouped by locality or issue (e.g., a FedEx portfolio of Memphis-based charities or a national portfolio of youth literacy organizations).
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• It provides branded tax receipts. After a user gives, she receives a tax receipt referencing the company associated with the campaign, which gives the company greater visibility for its initiatives. When Prego or FedEx offers me a meaningful opportunity to engage with and support a cause and then sends me a receipt with their name on it, it’s one more point of (positive) brand interaction.
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• Companies can match donated funds, which incentivizes consumer giving and bolsters the philanthropic (and branded) impact of a company’s giving. It also makes it worthwhile for nonprofits to direct donors to partner retailers, since these retailers can easily match a donation.
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• Companies can partner with any registered nonprofit, regardless of size. The service doesn’t require formal on-boarding for nonprofits and doesn’t exclude small-shop charities.

For consumers, many of whom want ways to engage a cause beyond a traditional cause marketing point-of-purchase donation, it’s an easy and immediate way to directly support an issue and to track giving impact. Companies can also track, and then reward, consumers’ donations through the company’s portfolio of causes.

Many of the incentives the text-to-donate service offers companies double as consumer/donor incentives: matching donations, convenience and more immediate impact (unlike existing mobile donation services, the donor doesn’t have to receive and pay her phone bill to trigger the fund transfer).

Benevity and Obopay’s service is hitting the sweet spot of mobile commerce, mobile marketing and cause marketing, a place where Foursquare and other geo-location programs have visited, but haven’t fully yet claimed.

But how do you do cause-related marketing (or cause branding) right?

1. Pick a cause you care about.
   Crowdsourced charity had its pop–and then fizzle. Sixty-one percent of consumers say they’d prefer to see a company make a long-term commitment to an issue rather than having the chance to vote for the cause they think the company should support in the short run.
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2. Invest in a cause long-term.
   Crowdourced campaigns in which entrants vy for votes through social media can build site traffic and brand awareness–momentarily.  ”After one year, or five or 10, [these type of campaigns] won’t have clearly defined what the company stands for,” says Alison DaSilva, Executive Vice President at Cone. Consumer-driven, short-term campaigns also make it much harder for a company to measure its social impact.
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3. Involve employees.
   This is a two-for-one. Employees who’re involved in their company’s social or environmental commitments feel more pride and loyalty toward their employer.  Per Cone, 93% of engaged employees say they’re proud of their company’s values (vs. 68% of employees who don’t take part in social or environmental activities).  This 93% of employees who take pride in their company and work translates directly–and tremendously–to customer satisfaction and profitability (Zappos.com and Southwest Airlines are poster children for the theory of Happy Employees Drives Company Success).
   

   On the flip side, employees often bring their passion and knowledge of the company’s sustainability efforts to their interactions with consumers, which can be critical in the success or failure of your company’s specific campaign and larger efforts. Seventy percent of consumers say an informed employee would likely drive their purchase or donation. At the very least, employees greatly influence a campaign’s message and company intent.  As I wrote about here, Ikea charges customers for bags. Asking a customer who’s just spent money in your store to pay for the packaging to cart it away is a delicate request, which is left to the cashier to make.  By training its employees in overall company sustainability goals and illustrating how charging for bags supports these goals, Ikea impassioned (or at least educated) its employees around this transaction.  A reader’s comment on his bag-buying experience sharpens the point:

When the Ikea cashier told me about their bag policy she was beaming with pride. It was pretty much the only time I saw any Ikea worker happy. I think policies like this give people in the company a reason to care.

4. Involve Consumers.
   While  consumers still want to support your company’s cause through transactional purchases (81%) they also want opportunities to volunteer for the cause (72%) and to provide feedback on the product or campaign (75%).  TOMS Shoes is known for its transaction-focused buy-one-give-one model.  But the company has also done an excellent job of providing customers opportunities to act, e.g., through Style Your Sole shoe painting parties and a “One Day Without Shoes” event that mobilized thousands of students to go barefoot for the day.

Thanks to Cone Inc. for another set of valuable data points.

When the Jefferson School of Medicine began measuring students in empathy (using the Jefferson Scale of Physician Empathy) it found positive correlations between a physician’s empathy score and his patients’ outcomes.

The same is true of social purpose companies. Once a company demonstrates proficient quality, selection and price, its differentiator becomes empathy for its stakeholders–whether that’s issue-X-aware consumers or beneficiaries, local or supply chain communities, the environment or employees.

Empathy is real and it’s powerful. Even within the most rational, scientific profession of medicine, there’s been a shift away from just a cerebral framework to a social approach that embodies listening, connecting and addressing the problem (health, or in our case, pockets of social need) more humanly and more holistically.

Thanks to Daniel Pink for introducing me to the Jefferson Scale of Physician Empathy and to Tower of Power for the image.