But bringing the focus back to your company, this discussion of mobilization also demonstrates that you can harness those very same social media marketing philosophies to achieve other corporate objectives as well. We discuss those marketing philosophies further in Chapters 3 and 22.
Marketers as better corporate citizens
As has been the case in the last few years, marketers are increasingly supporting and furthering specific social causes that are in alignment with their brands. This win-win situation results in the marketers getting more favorable attention for their brands and the specific causes getting much needed sponsorship, too. One area where marketers are increasingly harnessing social media marketing tactics is in amplifying their efforts in the cause realm both to demonstrate that they have a business purpose that goes beyond profit and to better align with the values of their customers.
But why causes in particular? The causes have all the ingredients to make a successful social media marketing effort. They are usually time bound, have broad appeal, and are subjects that people like to discuss with each other. Marketers who tap into causes see their brands benefiting from the halo effect by being associated with important social concerns and by gaining visibility with much larger audiences than they normally would have. If you’re a marketer, it bodes well to directly support a cause, encourage its supporters to harness social media marketing tactics, or sponsor it indirectly. Even better, it makes sense to market your own cause efforts using social media marketing tactics in a measurable fashion.
Procter & Gamble (one of the largest consumer-goods companies in the world) organized a social media education session for all its marketers. But instead of having a series of presentations by employees, P&G invited social media experts to visit its headquarters. The company divided the social media experts into teams and paired them with the company’s own marketers. The teams were tasked with raising money for Tide’s Loads of Hope disaster relief campaign using social media platforms to sell T-shirts. (The Loads of Hope website is shown in Figure 1-7.) The winning team raised $50,000, and Tide matched that team’s contribution. Through this effort, P&G positioned itself as a better corporate citizen, raised money for a good cause, and was able to educate its marketers about the potential of social media by actually practicing social media marketing. Some detractors argued that this was just a one-day effort that got more attention than it deserved, but the fact that so much money was raised in so little time is admirable.
FIGURE 1-7: Tide’s Loads of Hope.
Social graphs for social change
There’s more to social causes than your ability to amplify your efforts around causes using social media marketing tactics. A larger change is afoot that demands attention, even if it doesn’t directly relate to your objectives. The web allows individuals to financially support a cause at the very moment that they’re inspired and then encourage their friends who reside in their social graphs to do the same.
When an individual provides monetary support for a cause, he can — in that very moment, using the social platforms and his own social media — broadcast his effort to his network of friends and associates. By doing so, he becomes a social media marketer, spreading the word about the cause and socially influencing his friends to contribute as well. This instant viral effect (the phrase comes from diseases and how they can spread rapidly from person to person) is collectively (and strongly) influencing how causes are promoted and funded — more so than the traditional strategies of backing by big corporations. This means that you, as a marketer, benefit from the halo effect of supporting a cause, but you can’t just support it — you must be willing to participate in this viral affect the same way. Here are a few examples in this realm:
The Pepsi Refresh Project: In 2010 and 2011, Pepsi chose to give away millions and millions of dollars to people across America who had ideas for refreshing their communities in positive ways. But instead of making this a traditional charity program, the Pepsi Refresh Project enabled people across the country to submit ideas that deserved funding. Ideas were chosen by other consumers. Ideas with the most votes were then funded. This award-winning social media program, which Shiv was fortunate to be a part of running, was social at the core (with more than 80 million votes and millions of conversations about the ideas) and moved the brand’s brand health metrics forward. In fact, The Pepsi Refresh Project has inspired many more cause-driven marketing efforts and is today a Harvard Business School case study used to inspire marketers of tomorrow.
Causes: This Facebook application (which is available at www.causes.com) was a perfect example of nonprofit organizations using social media as marketing and fundraising tools. (You can see the Causes application’s home page in Figure 1-8.) It allowed you to choose a nonprofit, contribute funds to it, and track how many of your friends go on to support that cause after seeing your contributions or receiving your invitation to contribute. Within a year of its launch, the application had 12 million users supporting approximately 80,000 nonprofit causes worldwide. Users raised $2.5 million for 19,445 different charitable organizations. Over its lifetime, more than a billion actions have been taken via Causes, with 186 million registered users in 156 countries. Since the success of Causes, Facebook has incorporated many of its features into the DNA of its platform directly allowing people to start supporting causes, raising money for others, and tracking the success of their efforts all via the newsfeed itself.
MTV’s Enough Campaign: In the spring of 2018, and in response to the horrific Parkland tragedy where a gunman shot students in a school, MTV leveraged its various platforms to amplify the voices of young people who were taking action to stop gun violence. When it came to social media, MTV turned over its Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat accounts to students who were taking action. MTV also supported the March for Our Lives protest in Washington DC by tapping celebrity influencers such as Lady Gaga, Jimmy Fallon, and Yara Shahidi to celebrate these young voices.
Chase Community Giving: Chase bank uses a simple but effective approach to cause marketing via its Chase Community Giving program. Since 2009, the bank has asked its Facebook fans to vote for their favorite charity or non-profit to receive a donation from them. In addition to the voting, Chase bank also promotes other charities on national holidays such as military related charities during National Military Appreciation Month and the Arbor Day Foundation