cause marketing

Promotion like this is known as cause marketing, a strategy in which brands connect to social issues.

I first wrote about cause marketing more than a decade ago in my book Compassion, Inc. I discovered that after 9/11, connecting brands to causes became an imperative.

If done more intentionally, purpose marketing, today’s term for cause marketing, can be great—for causes, for consumers, and for brands.

Although cause marketing had existed since the 1970s, the combination of wanting to do something—anything—and the exponential growth of the internet and social media enabled this strategy to take hold.

Ackerman said "cause marketing" was a priority for the league from its inception.