He called corporate social-responsibility programs "hypocritical window-dressing" that "harm the foundations of a free society." Friedman had made many of those arguments in his 1962 book, "Capitalism and Freedom." But their appearance in a popular journal moved the debate to the front burner and led eventually to "cause marketing," the name given to merging products with causes.

Just thought I'd share his POV:
http://wvgazette.com/Opinion/OpEdCommentaries/200...

Good article but I m not sure I agree with all of it….

I realize that the benefits of cause marketing are really miniscule–important but small–compared to the collective good that can be accomplished by companies, their employees and their shareholders. The question is not “What?” but “What else?”.

given all of this, it seems rather facetious to ’support’ a cause by getting people to buy more of your products. if corporations want to make a difference, how about actually changing the way they work instead of promising some slice of their profits to the cause? instead of donating to clean water causes, how about running campaigns about the impact of bottled water? how about (visibly) participating in causes as opposed to just ’supporting’ it? it feels like abdication of responsibility at a corporate level: “look, we gave so much of each dollar to a cause, aren’t we great?” while at the same time not examining the circumstances that create that cause in the first place, and how they contribute to it.

this is not to say that cause-marketing is bad, or that it isn’t a brilliant way of raising awareness. it’s just that in comparison with other possible kinds of action, it’s such a pale and feeble effort…

we shouldn’t be trying to diss cause marketing: we should be trying to figure out, what next cause marketing should be just one tool in an arsenal, not an end in itself…

I have been working at Sustainable Business department of a global brand and I have involved in many cause marketing projects as well as many other types of collaborations with NGOs.Cause marketing is something that needs to be done very carefully and it should not be seen as the replacement of corporate responsibility efforts. Cause Marketing for me is a brand differentiation opportunity and has to be managed and resourced by Marketing teams (with consultancy from CSR department)

I understand the concerns of Prof. Eikenberry but I think those are manageable risks. I do not believe Cause Marketing should be the only way that a company responds to environmental and social causes, but it can very well be a part of the portfolio. GAP’s involvement in RED does not take away their responsibility of taking care of workers in their supply chain and I do not think they argue that.
In my company, if there is a cause marketing campaign, it is managed by the responsible commercial team and they do not put their hands in Corporate Philanthropy pocket to off-set their contribution to the cause.

Prof. Eikenberry is pointing out the consumer point of view and the risk of consumers feeling good just by shopping but not getting involved in other actions. I think this risk is equally an opportunity for the companies and for the charitable organizations. Cause marketing campaigns have potential to be created in a way that allows companies and charities keeping the connection to the consumer even after the purchase and helping them take action on behalf of the cause -obviously with not all of them but with the ones who would make the extra efforts-
Marketing teams are getting very experienced on keeping the on-going interaction with the consumers so why could not they do it for the cause marketing campaigns.

We will see very bad and good examples of cause marketing going forward and only the good ones will stay alive.

If I buy a carton of Yoplait, send in the lid and thereby make possible a 10 cent donation to Susan G. Komen for the Cure, how exactly is that gift more individualized than when an annual donor, say, writes a check for $200 to a hospital, or a ballet company, or a church, or the scouts, or a food bank, or a disease or relief charity? Especially since that annual donor was almost certainly solicited for that gift. Nevermind that the solicitation didn’t take place in our modern temples to consumerism, the grocery stores, a practice which Professor Eikenberry evidently deplores.

Her other objections to cause marketing remind me of a panel I was on about 18 months ago on the topic of corporate philanthropy. One of the other panelists said: “I have concluded that there is no altruism in corporate philanthropy.”

Maybe not. But does that matter?

Here’s how I respond: any insistence that we give purely ‘from the heart’ is in no small way cultural.

Under his entry for “tzedaka,” Rabbi Joseph Telushkin, in his book ‘Jewish Literacy,’ recounts a hypothetical developed by Dennis Prager and presented to thousands of Jewish and non-Jewish high school students.

It goes like this: Suppose a poor man approaches two men of equal wealth in desperate need of food and money for his family. The first person cries out in shared pain at the man’s situation and gives him $5. The second person does not respond emotionally. But because he feels obliged by his faith’s command to give 10 percent of income he hands the man $100 before rushing off.

Prager then asks the students, who did the better thing? Rabbi Telushkin reports that between and 70 and 90 percent of high school students say that the man who gave from the heart did the better thing.

But that sensibility is largely foreign to Jews. Tzedaka literally translates to ‘justice,’ although it’s usually rendered as ‘charity.’ Jews, says Telushkin see tzedaka as “a form of self-taxation, rather than as a voluntary donation.”

Says Prager: “Judaism says, Give ten percent—and if the heart catches up, terrific. In the meantime, good has been done.”

Telushkin says that one of the reasons why rich Jews favor naming rights following large gifts to charity is to keep the feet of other rich Jews to the fire. Raised in a different tradition, some Christians don’t understand that.

And yet, the Christian writer C.S. Lewis comes to a similar conclusion on the subject of charity in his book, ‘Mere Christianity.’

Charity has come to mean what used to be called alms, Lewis says. The reason is easy to tease out. If a man has charity, giving to the poor is one of the most obvious ways to act charitably. Just as rhyme is the most obvious thing about poetry, making it easy to confuse the two.

Instead, charity means love. Not the emotion, and not necessarily affection, but a state of will. “The rule for all of us is perfectly simple,” says Lewis. “Do not waste your time bothering whether you ‘love’ your neighbor; act as if you did.” The result is a virtuous cycle. You do something out of love… this act of will… which then often leads to affection. The affection in turn makes it easier to perform other acts of charitable love.

Let’s ask this question then: Does it matter whether or not there is now or ever has been altruism… or to use Professor Eikenberry’s formulation ‘virtuous action’… in corporate philanthropy, and by extension, cause marketing?

Not to the people who ultimately benefit from it.