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

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

Evans: No, I'm talking about employee morale, which is marketing internally.

Guffey: If you make a decision, I'm going to give money to sell my product, you're going to lose right off the bat.

Whitmore: There are two types of philanthropy. There's philanthropy to make employees feel good and philanthropy in which a corporation gives away its shareholders' money. And there's no possible reason for giving away shareholders' money, except to enhance the image of your firm.

Donlon: Which could be construed as a shareholder benefit.

Beene: Constantine Micandros, the former CEO of Conoco, once said that he always hoped that the financial analyst would visit his company in the middle of his United Way campaign, because his employees were more energized in functioning as a team. There's a benefit in involving your people in something bigger than they are themselves.

Donlon: That's Peter Drucker's point: The for-profit should try to match the exuberance or feeling of commitment of the nonprofit. But to harness it in such a way as to deliver or to justify to the shareholder that you're getting some return. What does the CEO need to get this balance right?

William Adams (Agile Web): What I'm most interested in is bringing skills, abilities, and ideas together in a different way. If we look around this building, something unique was created by putting a series of manufacturers together in an art environment to tell the story of the evolution of the motorcycle.

What does that bring to BMW? Maybe nothing. What I saw was the evolution of the motorcycle and the interaction between man and machine. I've been riding motorcycles since I was nine years old, but this was the first time I heard the story behind what was going on here. And I think that was a beautiful match between different skills and different industries. How do you measure that? Well, I can measure it. I can feel it. There's an opportunity to create something new through new kinds of relationships, and this is a beautiful example of that.

Whitmore: We're learning that there are ways that corporations can participate in charitable activities and have a good justification to the shareholders that they've gotten value for their money, and the charity has not been raped in the process or forced to do something that they shouldn't do. That's the most interesting aspect.

Pollard: John analyzed what he thinks the logic of determining what's right is, and it begins with the clear definition of whose money you're spending, and ends, I'm sure, with a clear sense of objective on the grounds that if it's not your personal money, you have an obligation.

Vandewalle: I think that we should try to measure the value of donations as well as we measure the other things in the organization. I don't think we can, but I think we have a duty to try to do that.

Also, the longer that we at the highest level of the organization enhance the values of the corporation, the more the people lower down in the organization will align themselves with the values, and in so doing will spend their philanthropy resources in line with the values of the corporation.