Cause Marketing Halo Awards

This blog entry is the first of hopefully many entries regarding responsible business and how it relates to marketing. Cause Marketing Forum has opened the submission period for campaigns conducted in 2010. CSRwire.com describes it as "North America's highest cause marketing honor...[to] recognize nonprofit organizations, businesses and agencies for excellence in initiatives that do well by doing good."

According to the Cause Marketing Forum, "outstanding companies and causes will compete in the following categories:
    •    Best Transactional Campaign
    •    Best Message-Focused Campaign
    •    Best Health-Related Campaign
    •    Best Environmental or Animal Campaign
    •    Best Social Service or Education Campaign
    •    Best Digital Marketing Campaign
    •    Best Event Marketing Campaign
    •    Best Video Creative
    •    Best Print Creative"

A few noteworthy winners from last year include The Cheesecake Factory and Feeding America's Drive Out Hunger tour for Best Cause Event Marketing and SunChips for Best Online Video. The Cheesecake Factory partnered with Feeding America to do a 30 city tour in 30 days to raise awareness for domestic hunger and collect cans of soup-- over 300,000 cans. People who donated received a free slice of Cheesecake Factory cheesecake. Here is a video of the campaign:

SunChips, a division of FritoLay, debuted its commercial the eve before Earth Day during a broadcast of American Idol. This commercial showed the world's first fully compostable chip packaging. by showing "a bag disapear through time-lapse photography." Check it out: