S5 E4: The Power of Cause Marketing with Lauren Reed of REED Public Relations

Adrian McIntyre: 0:00:01

From the Public Relations Global Network, this is PRGN Presents. I’m Adrian McIntyre.

Abbie Fink: 0:00:07

And I’m Abbie Fink, president of HMA Public Relations in Phoenix, Arizona and a founding member of PRGN. With public relations leaders embedded into the fabric of the communities we serve, clients hire our agencies for the local knowledge, expertise and connections in markets spanning six continents across the world.

Adrian McIntyre: 0:00:28

Our guests on this biweekly podcast series are all members of the Public Relations Global Network. They will discuss such topics as workplace culture, creative compensation and succession planning, the importance of sustainability and environmental, social and governance programs, crisis communications, and outside of the box thinking for growing your business.

Abbie Fink: 0:00:48

For more information about PRGN and our members, please visit prgn.com. And now let’s meet our guest for this episode.

Lauren Reed: 0:00:59

Hi, my name is Lauren Reed-Williams. I am the CEO of REED Public Relations based in Nashville, Tennessee.

Abbie Fink: 0:01:06

Lauren, I am really interested in talking about this topic of cause marketing. It is, you know, it’s been something I think that resonates and has for a long time in a communication strategy, but it might have gotten lost in recent years around so many other, conversations around topical investments in our communities and things. But I see it, and I think you do as well, that it is a valid and important part of our communication strategy. Can you talk a little bit about cause marketing and maybe contrast that with some other things we might consider as part of a marketing strategy, a traditional marketing strategy?

Lauren Reed: 0:01:46

Absolutely. Thanks, Abbie. That’s a great question. Cause-related marketing is something that I personally am so passionate about. And to be honest, it’s my favorite aspect of marketing and PR altogether. You know, I came into this industry because I love the psychology behind communications and marketing and really digging in and figuring out what is going to actually incite somebody to take action. And the longer, you know, I was in the industry, I really learned that there is no cookie cutter approach, right? We talk about traditional marketing tactics and traditional PR tactics, but our industry is always evolving and we have to continue to innovate and look at different ways to do things.

Lauren Reed: 0:02:34

But one thing that I have found with traditional PR and communications tactics is that the foundational aspects are always the same, right? It’s your research, it’s your planning, execution. All of us who have been through getting our APR with PRSA or have any sort of PR education kind of knows that system, you know, the research, the planning, the measurement, the implementation. But what I found was missing for me personally in these campaigns, and I’ll preface this with, I am one of those really annoying millennials, okay?

Lauren Reed: 0:03:10

You know, we’ve got to, we have to have a passion and we have to really believe in what we’re working on. So I was probably three years into running my agency. So I started the agency when I was 29. So I was about 32 probably. And at the end of the day, I was kind of thinking through some of these things like, okay, I’d been in a prior agency for eight years. I’ve been in my agency for three years. I absolutely love the psychology behind public relations, communications, and marketing.

Lauren Reed: 0:03:44

But I was noticing my clients and then myself, we needed something more. We needed to know we were doing more than putting heads in beds at hotels, butts in seats at restaurants. This was pre-pandemic, so REED, my agency, was very much consumer-focused, Which we learned a hard lesson during March 20 20 for being so consumer-focused, as many people did. But to me, the difference is...

Lauren Reed: 0:04:14

It’s truly something that I’m just speaking from my perspective as a PR professional, then I’ll speak to the client side of it. But from my perspective as a PR professional, the difference is it’s truly something that lights me up and lights my team up and allows us to feel like we are working on something bigger than making large corporations money. And we love doing that. It’s our job. We love doing it. But at the end of the day, we need to feel like we’re doing something more.

Lauren Reed: 0:04:45

So by really integrating this as a core piece of our business, it has really helped culturally as well, not just with us, but with our client relationships and our clients who have implemented cause marketing campaigns. So going back to your question of kind of what’s the difference, I think, or what, you know, why would one consider cause marketing versus traditional marketing? I truly don’t look at it as an either or, but to me, when you incorporate a cause marketing component, it’s something that is very intuitive. It has to be intuitive to your brand, intuitive to your team, all the way from your frontline employees to the CEO at the top.

Lauren Reed: 0:05:28

People can sniff out a fake, right? People know when you’re just doing something, writing the big check and doing a photo op, but do you really care about the organization you’re donating to? So to me, the difference is it’s not even a difference from traditional PR or communications tactics. But it’s very much it’s another layer to it. It’s a way to deepen your relationship with your audiences.

Abbie Fink: 0:05:53

Well, and I think that’s, you know, that idea of that it’s an it’s an authentic effort, right? You have to it is more than just write the big check. And we’ve we’ve talked about that on this podcast in the past and certainly amongst ourselves that you can’t write a check and write a check and get out of whatever the circumstances are. So there really needs to be an investment and a commitment to that investment, right? These are also not one and done activities.

Abbie Fink: 0:06:20

This has to be a long term effort. And so I think the challenge that we all face, in this world that we live in now is aligning causes with our mission and our vision for our organizations and one that, can stand the test of time and is something we are committed to and can remain committed to over an extended period of time in order for that value to matter, right? To matter to our internally as well as to our external audiences.

Abbie Fink: 0:06:58

And creating that sense of commitment is so important for the success of these campaigns. So you’ve done these internally for your own agency. You’ve certainly done it for some clients. What do you think are some common.

Abbie Fink: 0:07:15

Elements that make these cause marketing campaigns so successful? Maybe not a specific brand particularly, but what are some of the things that happen that make a successful cause marketing effort? And then the second half of that is how do we define that success? What do we use to measure a successful cause marketing campaign?

Lauren Reed: 0:07:38

Absolutely. And you’re so right in everything you just said. And the most important thing, I have a checklist I’m going to run through of sort of our criteria for a successful cause marketing campaign during our planning process. But even if you throw all of that out the window, the most important thing is it has to be mutually beneficial. It has to benefit the organization or the cause you are working on. And it has to benefit your team because it is still marketing, right?

Lauren Reed: 0:08:07

And, you know, I personally, when we launched our cause-related marketing campaign at REED about nine years ago, I felt icky about promoting it. I didn’t want it to be marketing. I just wanted it to be cause-driven. And, you know, my team, when I shared what I wanted to do, they got so excited. And they’re like, Lauren, Fast Company, Inc., everyone’s going to be all over this. And I was like, no, no, no. We’re doing this because we genuinely believe in this. We are not doing this for publicity or attention.

Lauren Reed: 0:08:37

You know, I came around to the more people who learn about this campaign, the more people we can help, but you can’t go into it one-sided. You can’t go into it. Let’s say you’re a brand new, clothing line launching and you’re going to donate a bunch of items to a cause, but you’re really only doing it because you think that’s the best way to get on TV, right?

Lauren Reed: 0:09:01

That’s never going to work. You’re going to fail every time. It has to be mutually beneficial. So, you know, to think through that, we our initial framework we always look at is, number one, does the organization or idea and I guess I should step back and there’s really two ways we can look at cause related marketing.

Lauren Reed: 0:09:23

And not one way is better than the other. It really is just what is applicable to your particular brand and organization. And that is number one, are we going to align with an existing organization, which then there’s a different set of challenges, right? Number one, well, does the organization have a strong online presence, social presence with cross promotional opportunities? Are they actually interested in working with us? You know, are they willing to use that? of how flexible is the organization and allowing us to customize the programs. And then you have to go to the next layer, which is just the organization’s overall brand and reputation, you know? Are they efficient with their funding?

Lauren Reed: 0:10:07

You have to look at geographic reach, okay? Let’s say you’re a national brand and you have, let’s say you have locations in 32 different DMAs. Well, is what, I’ll say XYZ, I don’t wanna name any big national organizations, but let’s say the American XYZ Association Is what they’re doing in their Dallas market going to alienate your audience and your consumers and your Philadelphia market, right? There are so many layers of research and vetting that come into this that go beyond, hey, let’s donate money, write a big check, throw it on Instagram. right?

Lauren Reed: 0:10:49

You have to look at their core values, the mission. Do they align with ours? If you are a super large organization, is the brand or the organization you partner with, is their geographic reach large enough to effectively cross-promote your brand? You know, are they of a size where we can truly make a difference and we won’t be one of dozens of corporate partners? So you look at all of those things if you are, in fact, you know, you want to partner with a big, big name that a household name, right?

Lauren Reed: 0:11:22

And for a lot of our clients, we’re able to make that happen. And usually, though, we find out during the research process that it’s really tricky to find someone that meets all of your needs and that you can truly be impactful for them. And so in a lot of ways, it’s almost simpler. And again, comes with its own set of challenges, but we’re in PR. We solve problems for a living, right?

Lauren Reed: 0:11:52

I found it simpler. So for REED, my agency, when we were going through, when I had this idea and I knew we wanted to make it happen, we realized rather quickly as we went through this vetting process, we have to create our own initiative. There is not an initiative out there that is existing. So we created our program that is very specific to read. So in doing that, then you’re you have branding, you know, you’re starting from scratch. But the most important thing is, does your idea make sense? Does it make business sense? Right.

Lauren Reed: 0:12:28

Is it turnkey, meaning we’re running businesses, our clients are running businesses, our CMO clients are running marketing departments. we’re not in the business of making their life more difficult. So can we provide an idea on a platform that is turnkey Is it going to resonate with your internal and external audiences? Is it going to alienate any of them? And I do have some examples I can share on, you know, inadvertently, personally alienating some of our audiences with our program.

Lauren Reed: 0:13:00

And then at the end of the day, what’s the most important thing for any PR, communications, marketing campaign? That’s measurement. It’s, is it measurable? We look at all of those things before we determine which approach to take.

Abbie Fink: 0:13:13

I want to do two things on what you just said. And if you could dive a little bit more on to the to the measurement part, because I think that’s, you know, there are there are lots of ways to measure success with a cause related marketing strategy. And there are things that are, you know, the altruistic part and the I’m doing good part that is may not necessarily have a business outcome. And then if you’re going to make this investment, both from a financial perspective, as well as the time needed, there does need to be some sort of return, both, as you said, for the organization.

Abbie Fink: 0:13:50

That’s implementing it, as well as the recipient organization, because there is effort on their end to be the recipient of a cause-related campaign, because they have to, you know, they don’t want to just take the check either. They have to, you know, be able to benefit from the partnership in the same way. And you mentioned that. So what what do we do about that measurement part? You know, what are some of the things that we because we need to set those up from the beginning of what we’re going to be looking at?

Abbie Fink: 0:14:20

And then what I want you to do, if you could, is is, you know, I also feel these are very important potential strategies, really, no matter what size the organization is. This can be a small business in a local market. And because you talk about impact, that could be the difference between an organization staying in business or not if they partner up in that way. So but let’s let’s deal with the with the measurement part first.

Lauren Reed: 0:14:49

Yeah, absolutely. And this is going to sound like an oversimplified answer, but we measure it as we would. We set up our measurement board as we would any other client or any other campaign, whether it’s cause related marketing or not. We look at what are our media goals?

Lauren Reed: 0:15:05

What are our social media goals? You know, it’s always specific to the client, right? But if a client is, I want to grow my email newsletter, and then, you know, part of this cause-related marketing effort or initiative, you know, we’re going to filter in and tie in an email campaign and we’re going to set metrics. We measure it exactly as we would any other campaign. It’s just the topic of this campaign is cause-related versus, Hey, you know, buy these sneakers, right? It’s, hey, buy these sneakers and we’ve partnered with this organization who is then going to donate X, Y, Z, right? Or provide this or that. But we measure it just as we would any other campaign.

Lauren Reed: 0:15:52

There are also, again, and this is, you know, PR and measurement. I feel like we could have this conversation for hours, but, and we do with our clients a lot of the time, right? But there are also always going to be the intangibles, right? For me, an intangible, something I realized two years in of REED’s Be the Good campaign was that 90%, I think it was like 92%, so don’t quote me on the exact statistic, of our cover letters mentioned are Be the Good campaign.

Lauren Reed: 0:16:26

I didn’t realize that was a metric. I didn’t realize that was going to be an intangible benefit, that people were going to want to work at REED because of this. But I now track when people interview, I track, oh, do they mention this? Because not as a judgment of the candidate, but a, huh, is this campaign moving the needle in ways I might not have realized? So you always look for the intangibles, but you can’t really know what they are at the beginning, if that makes sense. So you really have to set your hard metrics. And it’s just like you would any other campaign.

Abbie Fink: 0:16:59

Well, and that’s a very valid measurement. one that, of course, you didn’t set out to do, but it does give you some insight, right, about if that campaign is still resonating. Now it’s a 10-year-plus campaign. Does it still bring value to internally? Is it still making a difference externally to the extent that people are still paying attention to it? And that’s a very lengthy campaign to run and still be able to judge and measure some successes.

Lauren Reed: 0:17:30

We don’t even consider it a campaign anymore. It just truly it’s part of REED. You know, it started out as a campaign and it never went away.

Abbie Fink: 0:17:39

Well, and that’s some of the best efforts, right? It’s become so part of the ingrained into the organization. And I think it’s really important to, you know, as you’re considering whether or not you are, if you are the business entity thinking about launching a cause marketing campaign or you are the recipient of the request is that, Your measurement of success is what’s really important here and that and what are the metrics that you are going to assign to it that says this has been a successful endeavor.

Abbie Fink: 0:18:13

And which is why I think we can confidently say businesses of any size can really implement a cause related marketing strategy, because, if as long as it aligns with your mission and vision and the goals that you’ve set, it doesn’t have to be nationwide. Wide. It doesn’t have to be beyond your zip code if that happens to be the way you’re doing it. And so these are really programs and efforts that are relevant regardless of the size of your organization.

Lauren Reed: 0:18:45

I actually have found that this works really, really well for the one location business, right, that might have a more bootstrapped marketing budget Because it is a way to really effectively get out there in your communities. You know, we all know the changing media landscape and it sometimes is gonna be difficult for, you know, let’s say a CPA firm in a small town in Kentucky, right?

Lauren Reed: 0:19:19

To really get the coverage and attention that a larger firm could get or someone in a larger market. But in the smaller communities, You know, we really believe every brand is local. And that’s why this cause-related marketing works so well, because whether you’re 5,000 people or a Fortune 500 or there’s 10 of you sitting in an office in Phoenix, right? It can be done. But I actually think sometimes it works.

Lauren Reed: 0:19:47

There’s less of the complications that I talked about earlier, as in finding a brand that really matches and has your reach and everything. But it’s finding that like-minded organization that has a similar value structure and is also in your hometown to partner up, they likely need and are looking for the growth as much as you are. So it offers a lot of cross-promotion opportunities, and it can be quite cost-effective if you’re doing things that are not, you know, just simply writing the check.

Lauren Reed: 0:20:21

We sit down with small organizations for our clients all the time, and we say, what’s going to move your needle? And we build the campaign from there.

Abbie Fink: 0:20:29

So where does the conversations start? So I think one One of the challenges, of course, is that alignment with the organization, the business, aligning the idea with that. So where does those conversations start and what are some of the things that you should be considering, to embark on this effort in ensuring that it is met with acceptance across your entire organization and that everyone is really feeling that this is an authentic representation? of our business.

Lauren Reed: 0:21:05

Yeah. So I’m going to tell you how it should start. And I’m going to tell you I did that wrong. I did it very incorrectly because I did the whole Lauren’s on a road trip. I get this spark. And, you know, as soon as I get in, I email our whole team about here’s what we’re doing. Right. That’s not the way to do it. It worked. There were only, I think, six of us at the time.

Lauren Reed: 0:21:27

So I only had five other people to win over. but that’s not how you start it. How you start it is, it’s research. It’s just like we say 90% of the success of a media pitch happens before you pick up the phone or send an email. 90% of the success of this campaign happens, in my opinion, by the research. It’s really, first of all, you have to know who you are. You have to know who your values are. You have to know what makes sense for your company.

Lauren Reed: 0:21:57

Once you know that, or your client, right? Once you know that, it is just as important that the person at the front desk is equally as passionate about it as the CEO. Because, again, you can sniff out if someone’s just doing this. So you really have to start with making sure you have buy-in, in my opinion, before you even reach out to a potential partner. You have to get your team on board first and hear them. Really hear them in terms of, hey, you know, I don’t know if I can feel good about this.

Lauren Reed: 0:22:32

So an example, and I’ll keep it very broad as to not call out any organizations or anything, but part of our Be the Good program is we provide funding for employees, not just employees, but employees and anyone really who applies to take service trips to work around the world. You know, I have an employee going in a few months down to South America to work on, I think it’s like animal, it’s some sort of animal care program, which is really cool. But.

Lauren Reed: 0:23:06

When we first started this program, we were getting a lot of organizations that were very, very far right leaning pro-life organizations. And we were really having, I had an employee come to me and say, I’m not comfortable. This organization has affiliates, you know, is affiliated with this group. And by saying this, we could be taking a political stance we don’t want to take either way, right?

Lauren Reed: 0:23:32

So knowing your team’s comfort level, and I was so grateful that was brought to my attention because, you know, I’m the the CEO visionary. I just want to make a difference. I’m so happy. So the research and getting everybody on board first and making sure whatever you have come up with, your initiative or the organization or the idea is not alienating anybody. So that’s the first question I would ask. If I do this, who am I alienating? Inevitably, you’re probably going to alienate someone. So if I do this, who am I alienating? And can I live with this? Or is there a workaround?

Adrian McIntyre: 0:24:09

Thanks for listening to this episode of PRGN Presents, brought to you by the Public Relations Global Network.

Abbie Fink: 0:24:16

Episodes are also available on our website, along with more information about PRGN and our members, at prgn.com.