Put a quarter in a jar marked "tsunami aid" at 7-Eleven, and the convenience store chain will chip in 25 cents of its own. Buy a pound of Sumatran coffee at Starbucks, and $2 will go to disaster relief in Indonesia. Spend $4 on a Heart of Asia pin from the Avon lady, and Avon will donate $3 to reconstruction efforts.
Some public relations specialists call that "cause-related marketing" or "cause branding" -- a tactic companies can use to associate themselves with a noble cause. The Indian Ocean tsunami has unleashed what may be the biggest example of it ever, perhaps exceeding corporate contributions to victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States, according to experts on corporate philanthropy and marketing.
Starbucks is one of many companies contributing to help victims of the Asian tsunami.
(Daniel Acker -- Bloomberg News)
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To their customers, companies often emphasize the purity of their motives and the compassion of their employees. But to investors, they stress that good citizenship is also good business.
"For publicly held companies in particular, there has to be some semblance of a bottom-line rationale" for charitable donations, said Curt Weeden, president of Contributions Academy Inc. in Mount Pleasant, S.C., which trains executives to run corporate giving programs. "Otherwise, shareholders will say, 'Hey, your job is to maximize the value of the company and pass the profits back to me, and I'll give it away.' "
Major corporations cite a variety of reasons beyond altruism for responding generously to the tsunami: boosting the pride and productivity of their employees, rebuilding countries where they have suppliers and keeping them in the good graces of customers who pay attention to their environmental and philanthropic work.
So far, the 500 largest U.S. companies, ranked by revenue, have pledged a total of $253 million in cash, products or services for tsunami-related aid, according to a survey released yesterday by the public relations firm Hill & Knowlton.
Ninety of the Fortune 500 companies have contributed $1 million or more, the survey found.
When some big companies finish matching their employees' or customers' gifts, and when numerous smaller companies' contributions have been included, total donations from U.S. businesses for tsunami aid are likely to reach $750 million, about half in cash and half in donated products and services, according to the Contributions Academy.
That would surpass the previous high in one-time corporate giving, the $682 million donated after the 9/11 attacks, according to the American Association of Fundraising Counsel, a nonprofit group that compiles statistics on U.S. philanthropy.
It would also put the U.S. private sector at, or near, the top of the list of all sources of tsunami aid, exceeding the contributions of many governments, including that of the United States. President Bush pledged $350 million in public money.
Some business historians credit American Express with the popularity of cause-related marketing. In 1983, the company offered to make a one-cent donation to refurbish the Statue of Liberty every time someone used one of its credit cards. The number of new American Express card holders rose 45 percent, and card use increased 28 percent, at least partly as a result of that campaign.
Since then, however, the most direct forms of cause branding -- pledging a certain amount of money for every widget sold -- have come to be regarded by some executives as a bit crude.
"Cause-related marketing is pretty superficial," said Debra L. Dunn, senior vice president for corporate affairs and global citizenship at Hewlett-Packard Co., the Palo Alto, Calif.-based computer company. "You write a check; you get associated with a cause. It's not a strategy that H-P has employed."
Like many large corporations, Hewlett-Packard builds its philanthropy around programs that match employees' contributions and put its technology to work for good causes. It is giving handheld computers to tsunami relief groups. It also promised to donate $300,000 off the bat, plus $1.2 million in matching gifts, and said it would guarantee at least $3 million from the company and its workers.
