Doing Good...(too) Quietly

This Christmas, I scored surprise shopping success at Kenneth Cole, where everything in the store was at least 36% off. After buying gifts for others as well as myself, I learned of a new Do-Good opportunity that the retail community was promoting. This one is brought to consumers by Network for Good. Kenneth Cole suggested that consumers should “make your presents felt” (pun intended). Already a supporter of Gap’s (Product) RED and of eBay’s WorldofGood.com, I was surprised that I had not heard of this promotion.

Founded by AOL, Cisco and Yahoo in 2001, Network for Good today is a complete how-to site teaching non-profits how to thrive in a Web 2.0 world. The site offers articles and tools for developing marketing campaigns, training volunteers and employees, creating and managing donor databases, and more. The articles are well written and relevant. The founder and CEO, Bill Strathmann, was featured by Fast Company this year as one of 45 Social Entrepreneurs Who Are Changing The World.

My purchase entitled me to a $10 contribution by Kenneth Cole to the charity of my choice from the over 1 million charities supported by Network for Good. All I had to do was go online and use the individual access code on the hand out. What’s more, I was also eligible to win up to $10,000 for the charity of my choice if I filled out the 3-line entry form (name, address, email address) while in the store and gave it back to the sales associate. No purchase was necessary for entry into this contest. Turns out, I was also able to enter online.

I saw no in-store collateral promoting this great promotion. In fact, the store associates didn’t mention it until they placed the collateral in my shopping bag. It’s possible this understated approach is right on-brand for KC – I don’t really shop there regularly and don’t pretend to know what the brand stands for. Nonetheless, this was an opportunity to associate the Kenneth Cole brand with the worthy causes supported by Network for Good, and with the nobility of giving to charity.

So, while a great idea with lots of potential, seems to me that Kenneth Cole did not commit fully to the initiative, and did not benefit as much as they could have.

Doing a World of Good

According to the Fair Trade Labelling Organizations International, consumers spent over 2.3 billion euros on Fairtrade certified products in 2007. This represents a 47% increase on the previous year and means that over 1.5 million producers and workers in 58 developing countries now benefit from Fairtrade sales.

Into this growing opportunity space, welcome World of Good Marketplace, a new-to-the-world partnership between ebay and fairtrade wholesaler World of Good, Inc. The business, called WorldofGood.com, enables users to fulfill their desire to own authentic, responsibly made and sold products and know the stories behind them. In millennial perfect pitch, WorldofGood.com uses e-commerce to promote social responsibility globally.

Launched September 2, 2008, WorldofGood.com brings to users’ fingertips products from all over the world that are verified as People- and Eco-Positive by independent trust certifiers. Well-known organizations like 10,000 Villages, Novica and World of Good, Inc. can participate, and so can individual artisans and small importers of fair trade goods. To build confidence in the marketplace, all of the products on WorldofGood.com have a trust certification and each product’s and producer’s impact is documented. “Trustology” is the hierarchy of trust certifications at the product, producer, and seller levels. “Goodprint” reports the impact on people, the environment, animals and the causes the producer supports so that buyers can select the kind of impact their consumption has on the world.

The concept is compelling, trend-right, and well-intentioned. The functionality is undoubtedly great, given the talent at ebay. Huge kudos to World of Good, Inc. and ebay.

However, this site is a cold e-commerce site. It lacks charm, ethnicity and visual expression equal to the aspirations underlying the concept. Producer profiles and product backstories are missing, too. A few are available in a PDF buried in the "media kit" which is really missing the point. These can, and hopefully will, be added to the commerce site soon. Emotional connections are key to drawing users in and keeping them engaged. The intellectual appeal is powerful, but will only last so long.

So, here’s my advice: take the weekend off to celebrate. Then, get back to work defining and building a branded look and feel and content worthy of the vision of this exciting new concept.

Five Things We Want in a Brand Now and Who Delivers

We have high hopes for brands. In fact, brands are all about hope. We want them to show concern for less fortunate people, provide us great service, give us good advice, care about the planet, and help us take care of ourselves. In looking at the brandscape recently, I found a few surprises. Here's a summary, and a few comments on each one.

The brands that deliver now:

1. Social Conscience:
   Benetton uses its ads to make a case for ending hunger, fighting AIDs, and more. The images are usually bold and often shocking. It's attention-getting stuff. TOM’s Shoes takes a different approach by building social responsibility into its business model, not just its marketing. They give away a pair of shoes to a child in Latin America or Africa for every pair they sell. Customers can get in on the Shoe-Drop events, too.
   
   
2. Great Service:
   You’ve heard the urban legend about Nordstrom taking back defective tires, which they've never carried. They’ve been the poster child for customer service. Zappos.com strives to be the online service leader, and through their policies, training, and depth of inventory, they are doing just that. They carry all the major brands, shipping is free, shipping upgrades are used to surprise and delight customers and returns are accepted, no questions asked.
   
   
3. Good Advice:
   In the old days, financial advisors did all the talking. Remember EF Hutton's "When EF Hutton talks, people listen"? But the slogan belied a one-size-fits-all approach to advice. In a perfect Web 2.0 take on what good advice is, Schwab acknowledges that people today want someone to listen them, and give advice that's relevant to their situation. Schwab's tagline, "Talk to Chuck" says it all.
   
   
4. Green Cred:
   From its support of the Surf Rider Foundation to effectively creating the market for organic cotton to working with their suppliers to produce recycled raw materials, Patagonia was the first brand with Green Cred. And by using Patagonia's products some of that cred rubbed off onto customers. Now, Nalgene is the way to make a statement about your Green Cred. Their polycarbonate and HDPE bottles are the way we'll keep bottled water companies from draining our springs and avoid all those water bottles ending up in our landfills.
   
   
5. Good For Your Body:
   Thanks to fruit smoothies, Jamba Juice became known as a provider of healthy snacks. Here’s a surprise: Taco Bell’s Fresco Menu is lighter fare than most items on the Jamba Juice regular menu, and its “Why Pay More?” campaign makes it good for your wallet, too.
   

The New Face of Do-Good Consumerism

It used to be that the same names always came up when anyone talked about socially responsible companies: Patagonia, The Body Shop, Ben & Jerry’s, maybe Benetton, and that was about it. What made them socially responsible differed from company to company – but having a conscience was an essential part of their relationship with employees, owners, and customers.

Today, we expect big companies to be good citizens of the world – Chevron, Nike, Gap, Starbucks, Pepsico and others produce annual reports on their acts of corporate or social responsibility. The reports are posted proudly on company websites, and the companies are truly making progress in cleaning up their act. But being a good citizen is generally a response to external pressures - it's not part of most companies' DNA.

Then, there’s 2006 startup, TOM’s Shoes. TOM’s is a business that's also a social movement. The name – TOM’s stands for TOMorrow’s Shoes – and their “One-for-One” commitment to give a child in need a pair of shoes for every pair sold, make customers feel great for buying a pair of TOM’s shoes. There are blogs, block parties, and foreign country shoe drops in addition to TOM’s own stores and retail accounts where customers can share the feel-good TOM’s experience.

Retailers like TOM’s have made it a central part of their business proposition to creatively and tangibly take on big social, economic or environmental issues while also providing products that U.S. consumers want to buy. These companies have figured out that taking action on a human scale and letting the customer in on the act is cool, and creates a reason to be brand loyal.

And as Carol Phillips points out in her Millennial Marketing blog, this type of do-good positioning really resonates with millennials. As Phillips points out "One of the most cherished Millennial values is 'making a difference'. This makes cause marketing a natural choice for many Millennial marketers."

What is your favorite do-good brand?