Cause Marketing
Week in Review 11/3 - 11/9
November 09, 2012
This past week social media has seen more action and adventure than a summer blockbuster movie comprised of nothing but explosions-
-and car chases.
TheOatmeal.com Raises $100k for Charity After Being Threatened with Lawsuit by FunnyJunk
June 12, 2012
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Yesterday afternoon, I visited one of my favorite web comic websites, TheOatmeal.com, and happened into a truly entertaining interwebs war with all the bells and whistles. FunnyJunk, a joke repository that hosts “user-generated” photos, threatened to sue The Oatmeal because of a blog post they wrote a year ago. What is the blog post about that could get them so riled up? The Oatmeal requested that FunnyJunk remove all hosted content stolen from The Oatmeal. That’s right—FunnyJunk is attempting to sue someone for complaining about how they were ripping off everyone else’s work. In response to this letter, The Oatmeal opened up a charity campaign on IndieGoGo to raise the requested $20,000 from FunnyJunk’s lawyer—only The Oatmeal will be giving this money to charity. So far, $100,000 has been raised in less than 24 hours.
An Awesome Example of Using Social Media for Cause Marketing
November 08, 2010
Instead of talking about how Facebook can make money for businesses, let’s talk about how social media can help charities and non-profit organizations in your community. Marketing to improve awareness or to promote a particular charity is called cause marketing. Some of you may be familiar with the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure or the Live Strong campaigns. These are two very popular examples of cause marketing. However, these campaigns are run with huge budgets and tons of staff. How can you get awareness in your local community for a cause that you care about?
As a local example, the Often Awesome organization has been using social media for over a year to help raise awareness about ALS, sometimes known as Lou Gehrig’s disease or motor neuron disease in Great Britain. In 2009, Tim LaFollette, a graduate of Guilford College, was diagnosed with an extremely aggressive form of ALS. To give you a shortened version of what ALS is, basically your nerve cells waste away or die slowly, leaving the person in a paralyzed body with a fully functioning mind. His friends and wife organized what they call the Often Awesome Army to help raise awareness about Tim’s condition and raise money to improve his quality of life.
