There is a basic concept of “figure and ground” that every marketer considers while developing an ad for his brand. Social cause marketing is all about giving equal importance and visibility to both the figure (brand) and the ground (social issue) in their advertisement and communication to the consumers. The companies investing and taking the route of social cause marketing(SCM), will be able to differentiate their brands from competitors in consumers’ minds, which could increase the efficiency of their other marketing efforts, greater brand loyalty and increased market share.
Social cause marketing should be done with the prime motive of societal benefit and not for gaining public image for profits. In current time’s the point of parity between different brands in the Indian market is very high, hence there needs to be a serious thought given on the reasons for the customer to recall your brand. In this scenario the importance of “good will” associated with a brand comes in. exposure to any type of well conceived promotional initiative for a brand leads to more positive feelings about the brand in a consumer’s mind, and the consumer starts treating the social initiative as a brand’s style of marketing as an important attribute of the brand. This gives the “brand loyalty” and “top of the mind recall” to the brand. There might not be an immediate effect of this kind of an initiative on the top/bottom line of the brand but the perspective has to be a long term one, and the prime outcome is the brand loyalty that the brand receives out of this SCM initiative. Social cause marketing initiative has to be a continuous one that can result in better business and “brand equity”.
Social issues are really critical and closely associated with the lives of people; hence the company should handle it in a very delicate manner. The branding effect of the SCM initiative largely depends on factors like the coherence between the brand and the social issue, the social awareness of the public and their sensitivity to the issues and also the brand reputation of the company. The company reaps the maximum branding advantage out of the SCM initiative if there is an exact fit between the company brand and the social issue it is targeting (in some cases it could be opposite too), because then the consumers will be able to directly associate the issue with the brand image and the reputation of the brand could be enhanced (E.g. a health drink company taking up the issue of malnourishment of kids). Similarly the high social awareness and the high reputation of the brand are the ideal recipe for the success of the SCM initiative.
Another very important branding that SCM does is that gives the confidence to the employees that they are working in a right organization, it helps in retaining and engaging talented employees as everyone likes to work in a socially responsible organization.
The positive intentions of any brand if communicated in a right manner will never go un-noticed, the profits would be the side effects, but the ultimate prize would be the brand loyalty and top of the mind recall of the brand.
** Just keep the intentions clean, the money will follow***
