Newsletter: 4 Lessons from Burger King's Drive-Thru 🍔; 140 Companies Partner with Band to Help Homeless 🎸; Are Memes Better than Influencers? 🌭
Thanks to everyone who shared my newsletter with friends and colleagues last week. A special thanks to those people who wrote to tell me they are rabid fans!! I'll be updating you in a couple weeks on my progress!
I had to apologize to my mom last week. After taking her to the hair dresser I didn't have time for lunch. "That fine," she said. "But pull into Burger King because I'm craving a Whopper." As soon as I pulled up to order I got a recorded message asking me to donate a buck to The Jimmy Fund. Of course, I said yes...and then peppered the cashier with questions about the program, which she politely answered.
A few quick lessons about point-of-sale programs that include a paper icon.
1. Humans still matter. The recorded message when I ordered was genius. But a polite, knowledgeable employee to answer questions about the fundraiser makes all the difference.
2. Incentives work. This promotion includes a guaranteed prize. I won a free sundae! (My mom says it's hers!)
3. Your paper icon doesn't need to be big. This icon was smaller than my iPhone. Stop wasting paper and ink on anything bigger.
4. Don't limit yourself to one partner. The best time to recruit a second partner for your cause marketing program is immediately after you land the first. Leverage the first partner to get your second. This program has two: Burger King and Valvoline Instant Oil Change. Companies generally love the cross-promotion!
Congratulations to cause marketer David Giagrando and his team at The Jimmy Fund for executing yet another outstanding program! Ahem, this isn't David's first rodeo. I've admired and learned from his work for many years!
Partnership notes
🎸This is a great example of leveraging one, great asset (in this case a hugely popular rock band) into a cause marketing opportunity. 140 businesses partnered with Pearl Jam to raise millions for Seattle's homeless.
📌Why your paper charity pinup should have coupons.
🏬You probably haven't heard of the retailer Neighborhood Goods, but they may represent the changes we'll see in retail in the years to come.
1. The focus will be less on stocking and moving inventory and more on brand representation. Stores will only carry several brands.
2. Stores will be a place to host a community. In the Neighborhood Goods stores, community will center on a restaurant.
3. The riches will be in the niches. Stores will be focused on building "tribes" of customers with focused interests.
🛒Why line-free mobile checkout - and not self-checkout - is the future of checkout in grocery stores. You can see how supermarkets like Kroger are heading in this direction with tech like Kroger Edge.
Marketing your cause 🤑
🗞Nonprofits could learn a lot from local newspapers that are aggressively building online audiences. This article details two winning strategies: email and SEO.
🖥📱🔈Must-read on why you should be optimizing your content marketing for desktop, mobile and voice - even if 90% of your current traffic is coming from the desktop.
⚠️Add this graph to your pitch deck. Cause is important to Millennials, but it's not the only thing that makes them loyal to a brand. But, I would argue, that when added it makes everything else better. 😌
🦄Here's an idea. Give superfans direct access to your platform. Why 140 photographers have free rein on National Geographic's 90 million followers on Instagram.
Cool jobs in cause** 😎
1. Manager, Corporate Alliances, Special Olympics (Washington, DC)
2. Manager, Corporate Sponsorship, Make A Wish (Phoenix)
3. Corporate Development Officer, American Diabetes Association (Arlington, VA)
**Have your cause-related job featured here for FREE. Hit reply or email me at joe@selfishgiving.com.
Brain food 🧠🍎
👨🏫Harvard Business Review on the what the best nonprofits know about strategy.
🧐Do memes have a better ROI than influencers? I really want to dig into this more. Who's had success or experience with memes?
✏️Writer Austin Kleon argues that copying is how we learn. For me? Creation is theft.
Have a question, story suggestion or category you want to see covered? Just leave a comment below. 🙏
