Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation: Corporate Sponsorship Choices

Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation: Corporate sponsorship choices

1. Do you think cause-related marketing actually works?

Yes, I do think cause-related marketing (CRM) works well for both nonprofit organizations and for-profit businesses. According to this case, I have two reasons for this argument. First, the rationale behind CRM enables its success. Theoretically speaking, it is “a business strategy that helps an organization stand for a social issues(s) to gain significant bottom line and social impacts while making an emotional and relevant connection to stakeholders” . Therefore, it usually has a huge and existed customer base that cares for this issue and has the potential to buy relevant products or service. Let alone the fact that those issues are usually pressing, urgent, and worth noticing. And in reality, customers tend to buy things that are associated with certain causes. In this sense, nonprofit organizations get to address their causes to a wider range of audiences while profit-seeking companies could build up a more positive public image and improve customer relations. Second, the specific practice of CRM makes it a win-win situation for both parties. Corporation based on joint values proves to be the most natural, efficient, and productive. It helps businesses stretch to additional marketing opportunities and new audiences, increase their sales, as well as stand out from their competitors with competitive advantages. Also, license fee and some percentage contribution from particular product sales means better abilities for nonprofit organizations, either financial or human resources, to promote causes, reach more supporters, and exert further influences.

To conclude, I believe CRM works well for either nonprofit organizations or for-profit businesses. This marketing model brings more resources to both.

2. How might pink washing pose a risk for corporations?

According to the case, pink washing means “the phenomenon of a corporation creating an alliance with a charitable cause more for the intention of boosting its sales and corporate image and less for the intention of helping a worthwhile cause” . Whether the mass public would perceive a company involving pink washing depends on two premises. First, how much information a customer can get from buying this cause-related product? Second, how likely a customer would doubt the tie between product sale and donation? If a customer only gets limited and ambiguous information from buying particular products, the chances he might distrust the direct connection between sales and donation are getting higher. Since the competitive edge of CRM is all about creating a cause for product sales, usually a moral one, on the corporation’s side, customer suspicion at this stage would overturn this good deed completely. Questions