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March 28, 2011 at 11:30 AM by Jillian WilsonMartin

What my clients want, they get. So when one told me I deserved a vacation, I listened! My husband and I jumped ship and booked a two week cruise to the Caribbean. It was relaxing, romantic and fun – and we enjoyed every minute (cue double rainbow – seriously, a double rainbow!).


But even with my new shades, I couldn’t help noticing Royal Caribbean International’s cause program. Overall, I was impressed, but, of course, I have some ideas on areas for improvement too.

Royal Caribbean has a number of community partnerships and prioritizes employee volunteerism as part of its GIVE (Get Involved Volunteer Everywhere) platform. Of all its programs, the most guest-facing is its partnership with Make-A-Wish Foundation. Since 2000, Royal Caribbean has hosted more than 1,000 Wish kids on its cruises and contributed approximately $3 million of in-kind services. During the cruise’s opening show, guests are introduced to the partnership via video, and throughout the trip, Make-A-Wish is included in various communication channels (e.g., in-room TV advertisements, featured tidbits in the daily “Cruise Compass” and a special flag is flown when a Wish family is onboard). These efforts culminate in a Walk for Wishes, in which guests purchase $10 Wishes at Sea T-shirts and join employees for a mile walk around the ship. On our cruise, guests donated nearly $2,000!


Amazing results, right? Absolutely! It’s a great cause, but it made me want more. While communications about Make-A-Wish on our cruise were abundant, they didn’t fully explain Make-A-Wish’s mission or Royal Caribbean’s results. Being the nosy person I am, I asked other guests (many of whom were international travelers) what they thought about the program and most of them didn’t understand who Make-A-Wish was or what they do. And they aren’t alone – while the cruise activities staff was highly knowledgeable about Make-A-Wish, waiters, chefs, stateroom attendants and others had little understanding and displayed minimal passion for the program. Also, the first time I heard of the partnership was onboard – where was the information when we were planning our trip?

Bottom line, Royal Caribbean and Make-A-Wish have a great program, but it could benefit from some of the market innovations we’ve seen this past decade. Royal Caribbean describes itself as the “Nation of Why Not” and I wish they would channel this energy for their cause. Why not leverage new media? Why not empower consumers through choice, personalization and deeper engagement opportunities? Why not incentivize employee participation? Why not highlight the partnership’s fantastic results and emotionalize the power of a purchase via social math?

I wish for the why not!


- Jillian Wilson Martin, Account Supervisor


(Full disclosure: Make-A-Wish is a former Cone client and Royal Caribbean participated in Destination Joy, a campaign Cone helped create in 2007.)


Tags: events cone awareness fundraising engagement employees causebranding

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March 3, 2011 at 11:57 AM by Ziba Cranmer

I am an athlete, I am a fan, and I am a woman.

As an athlete, I celebrate. I celebrate the skills and lessons I learned on the field (and truth be told, sitting on the bench).

As a fan, I cheer. I cheer because I love the feeling of solidarity and community that comes from a shared commitment to a local or professional sports team.

But as a woman, I cringe. I cringe because I know that some of our most celebrated sporting events, from the Super Bowl to the World Cup, are also the occasion of a terrible crime: the sex trafficking of tens of thousands of women and children.

Experts estimated that as many as 10,000 prostitutes descended on last year’s Super Bowl in Miami, many of whom were trafficked. And it’s not just American football. Tekla Roberts, a trafficking survivor and anti-trafficking activist, spoke of her first-hand experience at NASCAR races and golf tournaments.

A study by the Future Group noted that during the year of the 2004 Olympics in Athens, the number of known human trafficking victims nearly doubled. With more than 2 million people trafficked each year globally, most of whom are women and girls, the problem is obviously larger than sporting events. But because of its high profile, the sports industry has a unique opportunity to address this issue.

So what are the changemakeHERS among us doing to tackle this problem? Experts in this field often point to the 4P approach to combating trafficking: prevention, protection, prosecution and policy.

There are a few interesting examples involving individual Changemakers from the sports and airline sectors. One such example is Trafficking911, which launched its “I’m not buying it” campaign around the 2010 Super Bowl. Several athletes, including Dallas Cowboy Jay Ratliffe, got behind the effort and recorded a compelling video stating “real men don’t buy sex.”

The Airline Ambassadors, the industry’s relief and development organization, partnered with the nonprofit Innocents at Risk to educate airline personnel and issue procedural guidelines for addressing suspects of trafficking on flights. Free Generation International launched its “RED Card against Trafficking” campaign in conjunction with the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, but it struggled to find corporate partnerships willing to associate their brands with this important but difficult issue.

These efforts are commendable, but to really make change in an issue that crosses sports and countries, companies need to get involved. Having worked for the past seven years in corporate responsibility at Nike, I was incredibly fortunate to broker partnerships between my company and nonprofits around the world. We focused on supporting programs that leveraged the power of sport to bring about positive social change, from women’s empowerment to conflict resolution. But it is time for us to also work with this industry to address the dark underbelly of its own events.

I look forward to hearing ideas and solutions from the community of ChangemakeHERS about how to help the sports industry realize its full potential when it comes to empowering and protecting women.


- Ziba Cranmer, Vice President

 

This post was written for and posted by Ashoka's Changemakers Idea ExChange Blog as part of its 2011 HERS Campaign in celebration of International Women's Day.

Tags: causebranding superbowl cone events trends employees global

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June 18, 2010 at 2:00 PM by Research & Insights

Sports have an uncanny ability to unite communities, capture attention and inspire goodwill, so major sporting events are a natural fit for cause-related messages. Which is why we are disappointed that so far during the FIFA World Cup – the sporting event boasting the world’s largest audience – the only buzz we’re hearing is coming from vuvuzelas.

With some digging, we found Coca-Cola’s “Youth Talent Development Initiative” in South Africa and FIFA’s “20 Centres for 2010” – an effort launched in 2007 which aims to promote public health, education and football in disadvantaged communities across Africa. But we were hard-pressed to find word of these efforts in major U.S. media. And what about on-the-ground or online cause messages? Those were few and far between as well – most created by NGOs.

No one has followed the topic closer than blogger John Kim on his site, World Cup CSR. For over a year he’s been tracking any and all corporate commitments to the greater good affiliated with the event. His conclusion? Nil. Kim tweets, “Fifa's Centre's 4 Hope R the closest things 2 sponsor related CSR initiatives I've seen while here: disappointed.”

Is this a sign of a trend? The global meeting in South Africa is not the first major sporting event with lackluster cause tie-ins. The 2010 Super Bowl, which despite the hoopla over Pepsi’s departure, lacked social messaging almost entirely during the actual game. This was a decline from the array of cause campaigns we observed in 2009. Prior to that, the 2008 Summer Olympics seemed to lack cause messages aimed at American viewers, as well.

Despite the immense resources put into these events, brands with an established cause or CR presence have not been using the world stage to communicate their commitments and to activate consumers. The World Cup will stand as yet another missed opportunity and overall a disappointment for cause marketers.

What do you think? Did you see something we didn’t? Post the World Cup cause messages you’ve seen by commenting below.
 

Tags: causebranding events trends sports global superbowl causemarketing

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