Cause-related marketing and sustainability are generally unrelated business concepts, but with more companies aligning with environmental causes, they have come more closely correlated. Cause-related marketing involves marketing that shows how your company supports a particular cause. Sustainability refers to your firm's efforts to preserve and protect natural resources and the environment.
Cause-Related Marketing Basics
Cause-related marketing helps your company attain business benefits from telling customers about your involvement in, or support of, social or environmental causes they care about. The more your typical customers care about the causes you support, the more they value your involvement. Many retailers, for instance, promote participation in charitable giving programs that help support local education or community functions. This helps endear them to customers in those communities.
Closely connected to cause-related marketing is green marketing, which became prominent at the start of the 21st century. Green marketing evolved as more companies bought into public demands for more environmentally responsible business practices. Ben and Jerry's, the ice cream company, has long used its support of Green Peace and other environmental causes as part of its marketing. As more companies have made resource preservation, recycling and waste reduction a part of doing business, green marketing has become a consistent element in overall company marketing programs.
Corporate Social Responsibility
Sustainable business practices are a part of a broader business ideology known as corporate social responsibility. CSR includes informal expectations society has placed on companies in the way they treat stakeholders, such as customers, communities, employees and suppliers, along with their treatment of the environment. Companies that ignore these social and environmental expectations could face public backlash.
Sustainability means that by doing your part to preserve the environment and natural resources your business relies on, you are not only acting responsibly but sustaining the life blood of your organization. Many companies operate internal recycling programs to encourage employees to recycle materials used in business. Reusing resources to whatever extent possible is also key. Companies that use wood in their operations sometimes participate in natural reforestation efforts to replace the trees they use.
- Thinkstock/Comstock/Getty Images