Starting from the top, cause marketing is not synonymous with affinity marketing.
Cause marketing can be a PR strategy, but it's not a subset of PR. Most cause marketing is, well, marketing.
Does marketing using emotion? Without a doubt.
But in an of itself there's nothing illegal or even shady about that. I'd being willing to bet that the CMD uses emotion in its appeals to donors and prospects. Is that exploitative? Well that kinda depends, doesn't it? If the prospect is in full control of their faculties, I'd say no. But if they are, I have a hard time imagining how emotional appeals are more exploitative than non-emotional ones.
As for the claim that it's 'spreading like wildfire' the fact is that for the last decade cause marketing hovered around 10% of the overall sponsorship market according to IEG. And sponsorship as a whole is growing, but hardly at 'wildfire' levels.
Does cause marketing have problems? Sure. Like in the cases where the match between the sponsor and cause is inappropriate or when campaigns or sponsors aren't transparent.
But it's hardly a threat to democracy in general or the Republic in particular.
Encouraging people to eat unhealthy food as a way to help eliminate breast cancer is insane. Please join our group dedicated to ending this terribly misguided partnership that only helps KFC by lending Komen's (once) good name to their unhealthy brand. We are encouraging people to instead donate to Breast Cancer Action.
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=120671484615719
An email cancellation announcement to those registered to join the conf call would have been ... professional courtesy, as would info on the date and time of the re-schedule. Having to look to the website for above is poor planning and poorer execution, which may affect perceptions of expertise. I wonder if I'm the only person annoyed to have attempted to log-in to the call and gotten error messages, before heading back to the CMD website to find the cancellation?
That said, I still look forward to Lisa's comments.
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