Guest post: Why Sensis believes in the cause
After Mumbrella criticised the Facebook campaign by Sensis to give socks to the homeless, we invited the brand to explain its thinking. In this guest posting, Sensis communications manager Danielle Horan explains the background to the idea
The debate about the intention behind the Sensis 1234 Warm Up campaign certainly unearthed a range of differing opinions. On the plus side it created a lot of discussion and has given me the opportunity to tell you first hand what we were thinking when we developed the 1234 ‘warm up’ campaign.
From our experience, working with local charities and community organisations to develop campaigns that are mutually beneficial to both parties involved is not a new concept. Cause-related marketing campaigns are prolific across the world; think Mount Franklin with their pink bottle tops (as noted by a contributor to the article) and Target with their line of t-shirts for Breast Cancer, or PAL with their Pedagree Adoption Drive – who will donate a bowl of dog food for the first 15,000 people to ‘like’ their Facebook page, to name a few. So we were interested in the comments posted on the Mumbrella site that indicated a level of surprise at our ‘warm up’ campaign with Mission Australia.
By definition, cause-related marketing is not corporate social responsibility/sustainability, but activity involving the cooperative efforts of a ‘for profit’ business and a ‘non-profit’ organisation for mutual benefit. The non-profit organisation benefits from the support of an organisation footing the bill to drive awareness of an issue or topic to the public – albeit with their branding attached.
Evidenced by Mission Australia’s commentary, support from cause-related marketing campaigns is very important to their organisation.
Sensis worked closely with Mission Australia on all aspects of this campaign. The challenge: Mission Australia relies on donations of clothes, shoes, socks, hats and blankets among other things to assist homeless people all around the country. The answer: Sensis found a way to help Mission Australia by donating ‘socks’, yes it matched the 1234 brand, and we were happy to help such a good cause in a creative way. All we required was a ‘like’ on the Facebook page – a simple proposition for a good cause, brand awareness that cost people only a ‘click’.
With the campaign achieving its goal of reaching 12,340 pairs of socks in such a short time frame we were surprised at the rate of success, with more than 13,000 people joining up as fans in less than three weeks. The positive feedback from fans of the Facebook page and the rate at which they shared it with friends, was clear evidence that the campaign had resonated with and appealed to many.
All in all we’re really proud to have had the opportunity to work with Mission Australia and we look forward to continuing to support them, and other community organisations and events, via The 1234 Project in the future.
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Danielle, While It is always interesting to hear from the planners of these campaigns you have not realy answered any of the questions in the previous thread about the impact of this campaign, any sustainable support ect ect.
Any plans to do so?
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I know! This response is like, ‘Well, we think our campaign was great, so there’
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I think you mean 12,339 pairs of socks 🙂
After the DDB Acct Exec not so smartly admitted to owning a pair…..
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Danielle, thanks for taking up Mumbrella’s offer to respond, however quite frankly I think that both DDB and Mission Australia staff did a better job of explaining the process and intent in response to the original article than this bland reference to other campaigns and almost quoting from texts on cause related marketing/ CSR / Sustainability.
I must however thank Jill Riseley from your sustainability section for her offer in response to the previous thread, and her follow up to date.
My original comments were based on my perception that the warm up campaign provided a pretty low threshold return to Mission Australia. If you compare the campaigns you mention in your reply each of these clearly has a higher value to the charity/cause. For example the Pedigree campaign…15,000 bowls of dog food, 3,000 odd dogs adopted and $147K in donations, Mt Franklin thousands of bottles of water providing massive cause exposure in hundreds if not thousands of locations around Australia over a significant period of time, plus whatever the cash contribution was. Similar point for the Target T’shirt campaign.
No doubt for the recipients of the socks they were appreciated, but I reiterate it just looks from the outside like a very large company is making a very small offering towards a very large problem.
More businesses can and should engage in both CSR, cause marketing and sustainability campaigns, and I applaud Sensis for being engaged in the process but these campaigns should have a decent return threshold to the cause, if the balance appears out of whack to the general public, then I think that the type of backlash being experienced is hardly surprising.
Please feel free to follow me up at any-time. I look forward to continued discussion with Jill.
regards
Mick
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@ Mick Morris
You say that this 1234 campaign looks like a “very large company is making a very small offering towards a very large problem” and compare the return of this campaign to other promotions by the Mt Franklin and Pedigree brands.
However, the 1234 service is still pretty much a niche service when compared to the other Sensis services, 12456 and 1223 (DA), which receive many thousands more calls per day than 1234, so the return threshold to the cause is quite high when you look at actual usage and exposure of the 1234 brand rather than Sensis as a company.
Mt Franklin is owned by Coca-Cola Amatil and Pedigree is owned by Mars so in light of the size of the owner companies, is the return threshold of the mentioned campaigns really that high? It’s all relative, no?
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It’s great that you explained what cause related marketing was and that it’s not corporate social responsibility/sustainability. Now how about Telstra try to develop socially responsible marketing campaign?
Corporate social responsibilty is about how you conduct business (and every aspect of that) and you’ve just admitted that you don’t really care because you weren’t trying to be responsible in this case. But you do in other cases? It’s a bit to believe now isn’t it?
The frustrating thing is that some industries phase such public scrutiny yet some can get away with murder.
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All efforts by corporate Australia to aid non-profit / charity organisations, no matter how big or small, should be applauded. Maybe…just maybe, if they receive positive PR they might invest a little further next time.
These complaints against Sensis are similar to walking up to Ian Frazer and saying, “thanks for the vaccine against cervical cancer… but what have you done about the rest of cancer?!?”
Let’s keep things in perspective people
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Reading the posts on the original story really disappointed me.
People aren’t stupid. When they joined the 1234 Project page they knew they were signing up to a page run by a business.
But it was a business trying to do good things. And if having their name put out there is the return they get for doing that good thing, then all power to them.
The execution may not have been perfect, that much is clear, but 12,340 (or 12,339) homeless people are now slightly warmer as a result of Sensis’ actions. If we as a society choose to misinterpret that simple fact as a heartless marketing push from a huge organisation, well, we suck.
Kudos, 1234.
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@Anonymous
‘Mt Franklin is owned by Coca-Cola Amatil and Pedigree is owned by Mars so in light of the size of the owner companies, is the return threshold of the mentioned campaigns really that high?’
Yes it is. Sensis is owned by Telstra – did you forget?
@Stuart
I don’t think anyone is saying that a corporation helping the homeless is a bad thing. It’s the level to which they committed: namely, not much at all. $8,000 in return for 13,000 new people to add to your marketing database? That’s a bargain, and all for a 62c pair of socks. Why not donate more? Why not encourage these great facebook members who ‘liked’ the page to donate as well? The execution was terrible but so was the commitment level. That is my problem with this campaign.
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Indeed, 1234 pairs of socks, as a one off gift, isn’t actually going to make that much of a difference. Perhaps something ongoing- a call to action to DONATE used socks? an ongoing donation amount from service charges?
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After reading the previous thread and watching the vid, I agree that hearing some smug private school kid interviewing a homeless man with schizophenia and suggesting that a fresh pair of socks is a life changing event made me really angry.
And no Danielle, I don’t think that you’ve really addresed any of the comments made in the previous post.
In the facebook page they acknowledge it’s a small project, but the fact that there is no real encouragement for people to interact or learn more about the causes of homelessness or Mission Australia’s work (apart from the occasional “visit the website”) really bites.
I’m not in adland, I’m just a consumer with an interest in in marketing and I’ve used Sensis in the past so here’s a challenge – why not use this c*ckup for a real partnership, not a publicity stunt? Feel free to change our minds rather than madly justifying yourself.
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