Beware of Excess “Creativity”
Creative directors can sometimes muck up marketing messages.
Cause Marketing
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The Cultural Touch
By tailoring its methods to local values and needs, Rare has slowly seeded conservation programs in 40 countries. Yet as more and more species teeter on the brink of extinction, the organization must expand quickly. Here's how the boutique nonprofit is delivering customized Rare Pride social marketing campaigns to millions of people in the planet's most fragile ecosystems.
Cause Docs
Is partisan media an entirely good thing?
Your Brand Is Too Small
A real nonprofit brand isn't a "look" –– it's a movement of idealistic people.
Games for Change
"Cause-related" video games don't go far enough in helping to solve social problems.
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Catalytic Philanthropy
Despite spending vast amounts of money and helping to create the world’s largest nonprofit sector, philanthropists have fallen far short of solving America’s most pressing problems. What the nation needs is “catalytic philanthropy”—a new approach that is already being practiced by some of the most innovative donors.
The Dragonfly Effect
Two veterans of consumer psychology, marketing, and entrepreneurship provide a guide to using social media for social change.
The Hidden Costs of Cause Marketing
From pink ribbons to Product Red, cause marketing adroitly serves two masters, earning profits for corporations while raising funds for charities. Yet the short-term benefits of cause marketing—also known as consumption philanthropy—belie its long-term costs. These hidden costs include individualizing solutions to collective problems; replacing virtuous action with mindless buying; and hiding how markets create many social problems in the first place. Consumption philanthropy is therefore unsuited to create real social change.
Cultivating the Green Consumer
Consumers say they want to buy ecologically friendly products and reduce their impact on the environment. But when they get to the cash register, their Earth-minded sentiments die on the vine. Although individual quirks underlie some of this hypocrisy, businesses can do a lot more to help would-be green consumers turn their talk into walk.
Antipoverty Apps
mPowering has created an app that awards goods and services to individuals facing extreme poverty when they make beneficial choices.