Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Seeking Good People Doing Good Work


Are you ready to use your skills and experience to make a real difference? In both a brand's performance and the world around us?

Our agency is looking for key talent in account management and creative to join our entrepreneurial team in Dallas, Central Coast CA, and NYC.

At Causemedia Group we create engagement that drives interaction with brands, builds millions of consumer advocates, and raises awareness and money for charitable causes. We’re a 10 year old cause marketing platform company offering a full suite of services from consulting to traditional creative to social media through our family of agencies: patron (integrated cause marketing), StudioGood (digital and social media), Kompolt (eBay charity auctions), and WhatGives!? (non-profit fundraising tools). We partner with other agencies and work directly with brands such as eBay, UNICEF, Food Network, Bloomingdales, Grammy Foundation, and Best Buy. We recently won the Mashable Award for Most Creative Social Good Campaign for Twitchange and our work has been profiled twice in The New York Times: for Check-in For Charity presented by Microsoft and PayPal, and for Fatburger.


Account Manager: positions available in Dallas and NYC. Digital, social media and promotions experience required. Interest or experience in cause marketing a plus. Ability to work in a fast moving, fluid, and collaborative dynamic essential. Ideal candidate is a mix of right brain/left brain and both a thinker and a doer. Role is somewhere in between a Sr. AE and Supervisor level at a traditional agency. Personalty and cultural fit take precedent over pedigree.

Web Developer: positions available in San Luis Obispo, Dallas, and NYC. See full job description here: http://www.causemediagroup.com/jobs.html

Email resume and work samples to: brian.powell@causemediagroup.com

Wednesday, January 19, 2011

Big D Superbowl of Service

Not exactly the way the Cowboys envisioned it, but they and the greater Dallas area are hosting the Superbowl this year at Jerryworld. No matter what teams make it to the Big Game, the community is who really wins through the many service projects that happen every year when the ultimate game comes to town.

A sampling:


The Athletes in Action/Bart Starr Award was created to honor the NFL player who best exemplifies outstanding character and leadership in the home, on the field and in the community: http://www.superbowlbreakfast.com/award.aspx

PepsiCo's Taste of The NFL is a Super Bowl party with a purpose! This over-the-top food and wine extravaganza brings together the country’s top chefs as well as current and alumni NFL players to represent each NFL city. Super Bowl XLV will mark the Taste of the NFL’s 20th year raising money and awareness for hunger relief. All net proceeds are contributed to food banks in the surrounding region. Taste’s goal is to raise $1 million in net revenue to be allocated to North Texas food pantries and to food banks in all 32 NFL cities. http://tasteofthenfl.com/superbowl.html

16th Annual Rebuilding Together Project enables volunteers to work side-by-side with NFL greats and local community leaders to refurbish and revitalize about 20 homes in desperate need of repair.

http://superbowlblog.dallasnews.com/archives/2011/01/reporter-erinn-connor-spent-th.html



Gandhi's Seven Deadly Social Sins

Came across this yesterday and was struck by it's brilliance and brevity.

Gandhi's Seven Deadly Social Sins

Wealth without Work

Pleasure without Conscience
Science without Humanity
Knowledge without Character
Politics without Principle
Commerce without Morality
Worship without Sacrifice

Friday, April 23, 2010

Cause Consumer Outlook 2010

iconoculture has released a consumer outlook on cause for 2010. It reflects the growing maturity of the cause marketing discipline and in turn the growing savvyness of consumers.

In short, just "doing something" isn't enough. Real commitment, transparency and trackability, and localization are the emerging trends.


Tuesday, March 2, 2010

Going from Org to Brand



Wearing multiple hats (ad agency exec, cause marketing consultant, soccer dad) I was honored to guest speak at the national conference of a youth and sports non-profit last week, the U.S. Youth Soccer Association. Here’s the synopsis provided to conference attendees:

Going from Org to Brand
How to articulate and activate
What does your organization really stand for? Do you struggle getting your message out? This session will look at creating a memorable brand and packaging your assets to deliver a consistent message, to both your membership and potential sponsors. Powell has worked with premier nonprofit and corporate brands such as Lance Armstrong Foundation, Make-A-Wish Foundation, Meals on Wheels, Nokia, Dr Pepper, Harrah’s Entertainment, and Pizza Hut. As an advocate of ideas with business and social impact, he is a leading cause marketing consultant and commentator.

Some of my key talking points were that shifting from org to brand means knowing not just who you are but what you’re really about. And how that can help grow your current membership and your prospective partners. It’s tapping into the power of branding to set you up and apart. It’s creating movements through moments. It’s articulating and activating as a brand in way that does more than convey or communicate, it compels.

Thursday, February 18, 2010

Do these actions fit the Olympic ideals?



Big sports events like the Super Bowl and NBA All-Star Game are a financial boon to host cities, bringing short term incremental revenue to the area and enabling longer term infrastructure such as roads and buildings that remain for years after the event concludes. Perhaps the most magnified of these examples is the Olympics, Winter or Summer. So I was saddened to read the following from Dallas Morning News columnist Jean-Jacques Taylor as he covers the Olympics from Vancouver,:

“The underground train stations are pristine. Police officers, imported from throughout Canada, seemingly patrol every street corner.

Volunteers wearing powder blue ski vests or jackets answer every question with a smile whether they're providing dinner suggestions or directions.

Vancouver, as beautiful as any city in North America, wants us to see all it has to offer during the 2010 Olympics.

The city does not want us to see the Eastside, about a 15-minute walk east of the exclusive waterfront area and the fashionable shopping district on Robson Street. The Vancouver Organizing Committee for the Games (VANOC) doesn't want us to see the Eastside either.

It doesn't want us to see its homeless. Or its drug addicts. Or its mentally ill.

That's really the problem with any mega event that descends upon a city, whether it's the Olympics or the Super Bowl coming to North Texas next year.

Local governments and organizing groups pour so much money into making the host city look its best that the less fortunate among us get overlooked.

It's unacceptable”

To be fair, the organizers of these massive productions typically do include a philanthropic component to the overall gameplan. These often involve major non-profits and their regional affiliates working with league officials and players to benefit the community in the days leading up to the event. But is it enough given the tremendous windfall generated by the event? And I for one cannot find any cause related or social activities tied to the Olympics. While it’s OK not to go above and beyond, according to this report, the principals involved with the Olympics and Vancouver as host have not lived up to basic levels of decency. Or to their own ideals.

The Olympic ideal is all about the human spirit that crosses all boundaries of race, religion, and politics and allows all to compete on a balanced playing field. The official Olympic creed is as follows: “The most important thing in the Olympic Games is not to win but to take part, just as the most important thing in life is not the triumph but the struggle. The essential thing is not to have conquered but to have fought well.”

We owe it to each other to ensure that the human spirit can thrive, and that everyone can play the game of life on the same balanced field where can they can at least have a shot in the struggle, even if they can’t win.

[read the entire column here ]

Tuesday, February 9, 2010

Ask Me About Cause Marketing

image by h.koppdelaney used under cc license

This poem reminded me of cause marketing in that our actions and lives speak for themselves. Brands and consumers doing the right thing, and living up to convictions.

William Stafford, “Ask Me”

Some time when the river is ice ask me
mistakes I have made. Ask me whether
what I have done is my life. Others
have come in their slow way into
my thought, and some have tried to help
or to hurt: ask me what difference
their strongest love or hate has made.

I will listen to what you say.
You and I can turn and look
at the silent river and wait. We know
the current is there, hidden; and there
are comings and goings from miles away
that hold the stillness exactly before us.
What the river says, that is what I say.