By: Loren Coleman
Once upon a time, cause marketing meant a limited campaign or program that companies initiated with nonprofit organizations to drive a spike in sales and enhance their reputation along with generating awareness and funding for the nonprofits. While those benefits remain true, best practices for successful cause marketing partnerships now routinely feature long-term relationships and investments, deeper engagement with customers and employees, measurable impact, and sustainable results that move the needle on critical social issues often tied to a company’s ESG goals. With studies showing more than 64% of nonprofit funds come from individual donors, and more than 70% of consumers want brands to take a stand on social and environmental issues, harnessing the power of consumer engagement via cause marketing is a win-win, generating brand loyalty for sponsors and bringing in new advocates and donors for nonprofits.
The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) engaged For Momentum to evaluate the potential for engaging more corporate partners in cause marketing. At its core, the HSUS is a program-oriented and advocacy-driven organization with a deeply engrained culture of fighting for animal welfare across a wide range of issues, from ending the cruelties of animal testing and puppy mills to promoting humane wildlife management and better treatment for farm animals. This commitment and the organization’s concrete outcomes for animals are rewarded by millions of passionate individual supporters and donors across all demographics.
Although proud of the many corporate partners who collaborate with the HSUS, the organization wanted to grow revenue and engage more corporations in supporting its mission through consumer-facing cause marketing initiatives. Given the wide array of challenging issues the HSUS tackles, For Momentum recommended establishing a narrow but memorable corporate engagement strategy that would appeal to consumers and could easily be leveraged during multiple moments in time.
We conducted in-depth discovery processes with key HSUS program teams that best aligned with these objectives and to better understand their goals, funding needs, and pathways to engagement. Based on our research, we developed campaign concepts for three critical issues and landed on a strategy to support the HSUS’s Pets for Life and Rural Veterinary Services programs, which work to ensure that all people can enjoy the unconditional love of companion animals and the health and well-being benefits of petkeeping regardless of socioeconomic status or geography. With animal welfare consistently a top cause supported by U.S. donors, and the majority of U.S. households having pets, engaging corporations on equity around companion animals was an ideal entry point into the HSUS for some brands that might not otherwise have considered the organization as a partner.
The More Than a Pet campaign celebrates the human-animal bond that transcends race, ethnicity, geography and social or economic circumstances, and in particular to give everyone a fair shake at pet ownership. Now in its second year of activation, the campaign is raising awareness of the many benefits companion animals bring to our lives and addressing pet equity and the disparities in access to care and resources that disproportionately impact people and pets living in poverty and/or in underserved communities. In 2022-2023 For Momentum helped the HSUS secure five new corporate partners – ADM, Motel 6, Ollie, Smalls and TQL – to launch the campaign. Opportunities included authentic partner integration, digital activations, public relations and influencer engagement, employee engagement, content and storytelling, advertising, point-of-sale activation, and special events.
Highlights of the campaign’s first year included:
- More than $1.5 million raised in financial and in-kind contributions
- 27 million consumers reached via HSUS channels alone
- 1.7 million social media impressions
- 343 million earned media impressions
- Celebrity ambassador and Grammy Award Winner Mýa helped engage consumers via video and a photo-sharing campaign that contributed 40,000 signatories to a pet equity petition
- Additional celebrity and social media influencers including Bellamy Young, Corook and Lily Bug reached 4.27 million followers
- 8,000 pounds of food donated to communities in need, with one photo shared equaling one bowl of food donated
- Shoutable digital billboards in 12 major cities generated 500,000 impressions
The HSUS recently launched year two of the campaign on April 11, National Pet Day, featuring a Community Hero Contest highlighting individuals who go above and beyond to ensure access to pet care for animals in their community. Voting for three finalists is open to the public through May 17 via the More Than a Pet campaign website. Votes will help decide who will be named the 2024 More Than a Pet Community Hero at the HSUS’s Animal Care Expo reception on May 17 and which community will receive a $10,000 grant to provide essential support services for people and pets. Individuals can vote once daily and their names will be entered to win a prize from Tractive GPS pet tracking devices, the campaign’s newest partner this year.
“Thanks to For Momentum’s strategic approach, our More Than a Pet campaign has not only raised vital funds for our programs supporting underserved communities, but also sparked meaningful conversations around pet equity,” said Steve McVeigh, vice president of business development and corporate relations. The thorough planning and execution have been instrumental in opening new verticals and expanding corporate partnership opportunities.”
—Steven McVeigh, Vice President, Business Development and Corporate Relations, The Humane Society of the United States
Along with the Community Hero Contest, the HSUS will once again employ a 360-degree strategy with robust custom engagement opportunities to enable corporate partners to advance the pet equity conversation and help ensure everyone can experience the joy of pets.
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