<p>Thanks for the thoughtful article on cause marketing and me. Your points are well taken. I began linking companies and causes and causes with companies in 1982, first helping the Rockport Shoe Company to authentically promote walking for health and fitness to raise awareness of the nation's first walking shoes. From the very beginning of my quest to educate and lead companies to use social issues to build bridges to stakeholders, my philosophy then and today is about genuine ties to a social issue and a deep/long term commitment. Rockport invested considerable $ to modernize walking and make it fun, scientific (it could help your heart health) and a bit more hip for all ages to adopt. I helped them to conduct series of scientific investigations into this activity, renamed it Fitness Walking, and encouraged Rockport to invest in R & D to develop shoes --athletic and everyday types made to encourage walking. This may seem obvious, but it wasn't at the time. Rockport lead with walking as their issue, created a fitness test that when unveiled on Good Morning America, generated 60,000 requests for it in pre internet days no less! These actions birthed the walking movement in the US, and yes too it helped Rockport grow from an unknown $20 million company to over $125 million in five years. It was a win for society and a win for Rockport. This type of relationship is what renowned Harvard Business School Professor Michael Porter calls "shared value. where companies find the intersection of a social issue that is deeply relevant to its business, then makes a strategic investment for the long term. I do the work that I do with great pride. Yes I am called by some, the "mother of cause marketing," and no matter what the label, since I started this type of work in 1982, I have committed myself and the work I do with companies to be highly strategic, (and yes it does take a lot of work to do it right and "institutional will" of people and $ and senior leadership). When I led Cone, we helped the American Heart Association refocus their extensive efforts in four campaigns: Go Red for Women attacking the #1 cause of death in women; the Alliance for a Healthier Generation fighting youth obesity; the Power to End Stroke fighting stroke for African Americans and START! promoting walking to adults. These campaigns have a variety of partners and yes some of not perfect, like the Rite Aid example you mention. The AHA does have vetting procedures that review partners before signing on. These campaigns have raised awareness, the engagement of new more healthy behaviors and have raised more than $250 million for heart disease research. Creating movements, like preventing heart disease, obesity, breast cancer, walking takes many -- for profits and nonprofits-- coming together to create awareness, education, raise funds for research and services and ultimately change behaviors. The road to creating these movements winds considerably. There is much learning along the way. Some missteps and some crashes. What is so encouraging is that companies today realize they do have a social contract to fulfill, with employees, consumers and communities, here as well as abroad. How they deliver on that contract varies broadly. Some companies do it superbly, with nary a problem along the way. Others are laggards and do it slowly, externally sometimes before addressing issues internally. And yes some do it only for window dressing. I led Cone for 29 years and as a team we help lead companies and nonprofits from Rockport to Avon, ConAgra, PNC, Western Union, among others to support social issues from health to early childhood education, to the environment among others. They have raised more than $1.2 billion for various causes. I have also helped countless colleagues teach their managements that this is a required strategy and the ways to do it well so both sides win. I left Cone to join one of the world's leading strategy and communications firms -- Edelman -- because of their deep and genuine commitment to moving social issues engagement forward through thought leadership, programs, products and services. Their global reach through 52 offices, 3200+ and 1000+ clients, will help to spread the strategy of well thought out, authentic engagement with causes to benefit society, employees, companies, ngo's and consumers. Again thanks for your thoughtful commentary. We must all work to raise the bar on great strategy and execution and shine a light on actions that are poorly done.</p>
Many people remain unaware of the contentiousness growing inside the fractious "tea party movement." ..Anne Landman
Maybe a few, not many though. Most people no matter their ideologies are fully aware that all 'sides' be they of the left, center, or right have folks that are contentious thus rendering their 'group' think tanks 'fractious'. Also most know the far left is as loony as the far right, and trying to spin that for political purposes just doesn't go very far anymore...too many information options! In the end it 'outs' the loons for who they are, and that is a good thing!
Do these tea bag folks realize the that the American revolution had nothing to do with taxes and nothing to do with representation.
Americans in the 18th century were not concerned about a tiny tax England was putting on tea.But the Masons,who were spread over all the colonies,saw that England was going to impose there banking system in the states.
The tea party folks ,who were the Masons, were about putting a bug in England's bonnet.
Not taxes.
In other words:
Its the Banks stupid
I think we can find common ground in the distaste of a true grassroots movement being co-opted by "shysters" to advance a different agenda. Many people remain unaware of the contentiousness growing inside the fractious "tea party movement."
Anne Landman
The current Tea Party movement started on Feb 20, 2009 after a phone call with about a dozen high-profile, conservative grassroots people (a couple ppl from that original group have slid from grassroots to astroturf, unfortunately) who were energized by Rick Santelli's "let's have a tea party in July" rant the day before. The intention was to use social media to spread the word in a modern grassroots fashion and have Tea Parties the following week in a few dozen major cities. About 800 tea parties were conducted the following week starting on Feb 27th. How do I know? I've been involved since day one. I was on that first call on the 20th and I organized the first L.A. tea party Feb 27, 2009. The rest is history.
There have been a few Tea Party "movements" in history, including the original. This particular tea party movement has nothing to do with the one Ron Paul and his supporters tried to get going a few years ago. That one fizzled out and died in short order.
Politico didn't "break" this story about Tea Party Express. Most of us in the movement have been calling out the shysters since they first attempted to slither onto the scene. But...many conservatives still think you shouldn't publicly out other self-described conservatives. Let's just say there's been a lot of back-channel bitching about the inanity known as Tea Party Express.
Regarding Judson Phillips and Tea Party Nation, I called him out too: http://brooksbayne.com/post/358255069/national-tea-party-convention-falling-apart-oh-when
The latest travesty is the attempt to fully align the tea party movement with beltway interests via this group they're now calling the National Tea Party Federation. When this idea was proposed, most of the teapartiers quickly severed ties with those involved. TPE, TPN and NTPF are not grassroots supported and are widely disliked in the movement.
I'm not "down" with the ideology most of you here cling to, but I thought it important to pop in and point out that the "real" tea party movement knows full well who's who and who isn't.
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