The Fine Line Between Brand Cause Marketing and Exploitation

Embracing a cause to help drive your brand is a tried and true marketing tactic, from supporting worthy athletic events to running Tweetathons, there are literally thousands of examples of how to do it right (start here or here, both great resources).

Unfortunately, there are also many examples of how to do it wrong – some well-intentioned if misguided or misinterpreted, and some just flat-out boneheaded or exploitative. It’s in the latter group that Kenneth Cole’s Where Do You Stand campaign sits.

Apparently Kenneth Cole has decided to double down on exploitation of controversial issues. You may recall just in February 2011 the now infamous tweet that so genuinely supported the rising Arab Spring playing out on the streets of Eqypt by…promoting their new spring clothes lineup:

“Millions are in uproar in #Cairo. Rumor is they heard our new spring collection is now available online at http://bit.ly/KCairo – KC” (ed: the “KC” being a shorthand way to attribute the tweet to CEO and namesake Kenneth Cole directly)

As mentioned above, I think cause marketing can be a very effective marketing tactic and one that can be positively received by all sides. However what Kenneth Cole is attempting to do with Where Do You Stand crosses the line from genuine support for a cause into outright hijacking of controversial topics and debate in order to push their completely unrelated product line.

If you haven’t seen it, the campaign poses a range of questions around guns, abortions, gay rights, and war, such as “Are anti-war protests unpatriotic?” and “Should the government have the right to choose?” For each question Cole encourages you to vote yes or no via a Facebook Like button, which helpfully pushes the Kenneth Cole brand and campaign into your Facebook News Feed. It also pulls in a range of Facebook comments and Tweets. While the Facebook comments at least seem to be specific to the Kenneth Cole campaign, the Tweets appear to be a curated list from across the Twitter landscape.

From a technical perspective, it’s not a bad implementation. It’s on moral grounds that this campaign falls apart.

Kenneth Cole is not tying this site or campaign to any charity or broader organizing effort, and any argument that it’s all about raising awareness is undercut, in my view, by the ridiculously blatant and inappropriate ties between emotionally charged statements and Cole’s latest fashion looks. There are no next steps, no guidance on how you can take action, no opportunity to give, no tips on how to make your voice heard. There are just classless promotional items such as the cheesy and useless marketing phrases like “Wear Not War!” on the ridiculous models in the downloadable wallpaper (one of several) below:

So soldiers and civilians are dying by the thousands on distant battlefields, and rather than providing support for worthy organizations on any side of the debate, Kenneth Cole feels their contribution as a company should be to leech off emotion, pain, and suffering by showing off models and providing “helpful” links to a portion of the site called “What You Stand In” where you can pick your fashion looks from among Cole’s selection.

I was trying to end this post on a positive note by coming up with suggestions on how I would fix this campaign – criticism should be constructive wherever possible – but I don’t think that’s possible in this case. This campaign is just too ill-conceived and too far gone. Kenneth Cole should pull this down, lay off Twitter for a while, and take a few weeks or months for a serious gut check of the morals underpinning their marketing practices.

This one should go in the Cause Marketing Hall of Shame.

Being the Corporate Facebook Gatekeeper: 6 Questions to Always Ask

“We want our own Facebook page!”

This is a post for the beleaguered corporate marketer, who by virtue of talent, vision, policy, or just (possibly bad) luck, sits as the gatekeeper in the organization who gets to decide which brands, sub-brands, teams, or products get to have an official presence in social media.

First off, every organization should have this role, whether it’s vested in one person or, more typically, a virtual team or committee. The alternative is often chaos, where a brand’s social media presence ends up fragmented across tens or dozens of Facebook pages and Twitter accounts, many of them ignored or abandoned.

That’s not hyperbole – I’ve seen it in many clients, and it happens far more often than you might think and even among companies viewed as fairly mature and competent when it comes to social. Brands get that way either by lacking a gatekeeper role, or the when gatekeeper doesn’t ask the right questions of those who want their very own shiny Facebook page.

The following six questions are a starting point to help corporate marketers filter, and are based on a set of recommendations I’ve discussed with numerous clients. The “they” refers to the team asking for their own social channels, distinct from the existing official higher-level corporate accounts:

1. Is their brand sufficiently distinct from the overall corporate brand identity?

Mountain Dew is part of Pepsi, but the brand is completely distinct. Diet Pepsi is much more of an edge case. Is the brand in question just a subset of the primary corporate brand, or something – in the customer’s eyes – completely different?

2. Do they have a unique target audience that differs markedly from the parent brand?

If the target audience/demographic is largely the same as the parent brand, then the case for creating a new set of social accounts becomes less strong. There are likely other ways to get that brand involved in social – a Facebook tab, or some percentage mix of the recurring content updates on the primary accounts, for example.

3. Do they have a unique and compelling fan value proposition?

In short, can they answer in a single, clear sentence “Why should I follow XYZ service on Facebook? What’s in it for me?” If not, and the answer is either vague or simply “because people expect to see us on Facebook” then no, they shouldn’t get their own official social accounts.

4. Do they have staff or agency resources to build and maintain the channel over the long-term?

Someone has to build the tabs, the logos, the backgrounds; someone has to craft and post updates or tweets; most critically someone has to monitor and moderate (if applicable) the conversation taking place around each social channel, and actively engage with the community. Do they have the resources available and committed?

5. Do they have a content plan sufficient for at least 3-6 months?

The fastest way to end up with abandoned social accounts is to launch them without a clear, consistent plan for creating and posting content (posts, tweets, etc.). Ask anyone who’s managed a company Facebook page, blog, or Twitter account – coming up with good content, day after day, week after week, is damn hard. If they don’t have a plan, either they’re not taking the challenge seriously or they don’t know what they’re getting in to.

6. Do they have a plan and resources for promoting the accounts through other marketing channels?

Build it, and they will come is not an acceptable social media marketing strategy. The team asking you for their own unique Twitter account, YouTube channel, Facebook page etc. must have a solid marketing plan for how they will drive awareness of and traffic to those brand new channels. Otherwise in all likelihood they’ll end up twisting in the wind, and eventually abandoned as they team realizes they’re not seeing any value in them.

These are simply a starting point, an initial set of questions to ask internal teams both to identify those with a real and justifiable need (and the resources and commitment to back it up), and to get those who lack that thinking in the right direction.

What other questions should be asked?