I just returned from a great outing at Cause Marketing Forum’s 7th Annual Conference in Chicago last week. Despite the economy that has impacted us all, David Hessekiel, Founder & President of CMF, pulled together a great show. (Check out the Twitter feed from the event here). The conference featured some wonderfully entertaining and informative speakers, and CMF honored some incredible businesses and nonprofits with their signature “Halo Awards” for outstanding cause marketing.
My takeaways from the event this year included:
Social media works. Since the last CMF conference in May 2008 I’ve really worked hard to connect with other fundraisers and cause marketers via social networks (Linked-In, Facebook, but especially through Twitter). Turns out, it hasn’t been a waste of time. Not only was it a blast to finally meet many of these people in person at CMF, but our ongoing social media connection allowed us to accelerate conversations when we did meet. We had better conversations that led to more useful introductions at the conference. In short, social media helped me to deepen and expand my business network.
They don’t call Carol Cone the “Mother of Cause Marketing” for nothing. Carol is our industry’s best thought leader. In addition to being an incredible speaker, she has a wonderful sense of where the industry is headed and what all cause marketers, nonprofit and for-profit, large and small, need to do get out in front of the business. It was worth going to CMF just to hear from her.
The way speakers present and attendees listen needs to change–NOW. Looking around the room at the conference, it blew me away to see speakers droning on and on and hiding behind their PowerPoints. Meanwhile, conference-goers pecked away at their Blackberries, talking quietly into their iPhones, getting up and walking in and out of the conference hall. AND I WAS A PUBLIC OFFENDER #1! Speakers need short (20 minutes max.), human, varied, powerful presentations and attendees need to check their electronics at the door and give the speaker a chance to earn their attention. They need to follow that up with good, thoughtful questions afterwards.
While interesting, engaging and vibrant, cause marketing seems stuck. This year’s conference had 300 attendees. Last year’s had 500. Despite the obvious hit in attendees because of the economy, I still wondered: where the hell are all the cause marketers? Our annual conference should have over 1,000 attendees. But cause marketing continues to be very niche. How many blogs cover the field, 3 or 4? Sure, mine and Paul Jones’ blogs are fabulous–we know–but there’s room for more, lots more.
So I left the Cause Marketing Forum Conference thrilled that I had been there, happy that David Hessekiel decided seven years ago to start one, proud that I was involved with something so innovative, creative and, yes, charitable. I also left pleased that I was genuinely impressed by the people I had met. People who were generally smart, personable, kind, and, yes, funny.
But I also left thinking that as an industry we need to do better. We need to grow our ranks with new professionals, and rally existing professionals, both on the non- and for-profit side, to our banner. We need to teach smaller nonprofits the benefits of cause marketing and how to raise money from it. (And, yes, the key word is money because if we can show them that cause marketing can do that–with realistic expectations of how much–their attention will be ours.) Finally, we can’t put this all on David’s shoulders, or on our “Mother” Carol Cone.
It’s up to people like you and me who sat and listened last week and knew what we were hearing was good and useful and interesting. But realized that we each knew three people who would have felt the same way but we never asked them to join us.
Joe — thanks for the comments about the CMF conference. Our organization, which received a Halo Award last year, chose not to attend due to financial considerations. And it looks like lots of other folks made a similar decision.
When/If we can have 1,000 folks attending the meeting, it will indeed be a vibrant, “must attend” event — until then, we get a lot of information and guidance from blogs like yours.
Thanks for being our “ears” –
Thanks for your comments, Sherri! Nice to hear from you again. Was just thinking of you the other day but couldn’t recall your org’s name!
Hopefully you can attend CMF next year. This year was tough for a lot of people. I went, but I had to pay my own way! But it was worth it.
Joe,
Thanks for your insightful comments about our seventh annual conference.
We strive to improve each year by providing new and varied content (e.g this year’s social media workshop, presentations from Macy’s, Timberland, Share Our Strength and others we’ve never spotlighted before) and valuable networking opportunities by attracting executives from the business, nonprofit and marketing services sectors.
Planning for next year’s event has already begun and I invite everyone in our community to get involved. We need help from the people on the front lines:
1) Let us know what you’d like to learn about and who you think would make outstanding presenters.
2) Spread the word that CMF is the place to be for learning and connecting. Sometimes I suspect that nonprofits are hesitant to have their business partners attend for fear they’ll “fall in love” with another group. Honestly, I’ve not heard of that happening, but I have hear of alliances being fortified by shared knowledge acquired at CMF.
Looking forward to working with all cause marketers to create win-win-wins in this challenging year and well into the future.
David, you do more than strive! You achieve! We as cause marketers have so much to thank you for. If Carol is the “Mother of Cause Marketing”, you are surely our “Founding Father.” Joe
Hi Joe:
Thanks for the kind words about the causemarketing.biz blog.
I feel you when it comes to cause marketing. We need to do a better job of getting the world out.
For kicks go to Google’s Keyword Search Tool and compare “cause marketing” to “corporate social responsibility,” “green marketing” or even “search engine optimization.”
‘Cause marketing’ gets creamed by all those other terms.
People can find our respective blogs or David’s site if they know the term cause marketing. But if they don’t?
All of us in cause marketing need to do more evangelizing, especially to those besides the usual suspects.
Warm regards,
Paul
Thanks for writing, Paul! I appreciate your comments and your participation in all of this.
Oh, and I do Google searches all the time for “cause marketing” and one thing is true: your blog ranks higher than mine every time!! If I didn’t respect you so much I’d call you a swear word [bastard], but as you know, I’m above all that!
Joe,
Thanks for the insightful post about the conference. As a Brand manager who evangelizes cause marketing internally, I would have loved to have been able to connect with all the excellent minds out there. Sadly, I am in Europe.
Perhaps David and the team could consider finding a way to do something on the other side of the pond as travel budgets are tight?
Just a thought & tks for the insights on your blog.
–Ryan
Thanks for your comments, Ryan. I thought there might be a similar cause marketing organization in the UK, but perhaps not. We appreciate your international perspective!
Joe, I once heard an artist say “it was up to us artists to help non-artists understand art.” Reading your article reminds me that the same may be true for cause marketing. It’s up to those of us believers to help educate the rest.
I like that Sharna. Also try to remember that “everyone is denied the truth against their will.” So if you really believe in what u r saying, you have to be patient and persistant that ppl will come around.