Zen and the art of cause-related marketing - Panel Discussion

Chief Executive, The, Oct, 1998 by J.P. Donlon

My guess is that the reverberations of this project will be felt for years to come in the motorcycle industry. And if we put this on the road, which we're now doing, it will multiply. Yet, it was not evident to anybody that it would have this kind of impact. BMW wanted to do this, but they also didn't know it would be this good. For example, putting the chrome [walling] in was probably a $400,000 or $500,000 decision. It was hard to convince the marketing apparatus that we should, in fact, do this.

And the same thing with Bilbao. I could tell people, "This is going to be the greatest building of the 20th century, so you ought to give it to us not at a favorable rate, but for free." But does that ever really happen? Because there's always a skepticism about the evaluation of the process. From my perspective, the only thing that will minimize that inherent skepticism is a track record. You put three or four of these projects together, then you get the attention of the marketing people. I would argue that culture is an interesting alternative, because the traditional ways of using marketing events, such as sports events, are almost fully explored entities. This is unique. What happens here every week is wild. We have never had an audience like this. We've never had publicity like this.

Heitmann: You should be grateful to the motorcycle industry that they put their products in your museum. Suddenly you get quite different people into your museum - people who never would have come to the museum before. That's exactly the balance and combination of two interests. And it's not that one should be grateful to the other, it's an excellent balance and combination.

Whitmore: I work for a family-owned business, and some of the family members are among the biggest charitable contributors, while others are not very charitably inclined. So their preference is to have the money paid to them in dividends and allow them to decide how to give it away.

I think most businesses should make their charitable contributions out of their advertising budgets. Because if there's no advertising value added, then why shouldn't you pay that money to the shareholders and let them decide which charity they want to give it to, or whether they want to spend it themselves?

Klaus Dorfi (Atlantic Mutual): That's a difficult question. As you suggested, we're really fiduciaries for the capital of our owners. We think carefully about how we distribute that capital. We obviously make contributions in support of customer relations. But the most successful ventures we've engaged in have been those where we just gave for the sake of giving.

For example, the president of the company loved jazz, and he said, "I'd like to run this jazz festival." I said, "Hey, I grew up in New Orleans. I love jazz, too. Let's do it!" So we did it, and the benefits derived from something that we approached out of a personal love were much greater.

Krens: How do you measure the benefits?

Dorfi: They're anecdotal - letters, acknowledgement, and recognition.