Cause-Related Marketing Assignment

Your first individual assignment for this course is on Cause-Related Marketing (CRM). As announced in class, you are required to read an article describing the different kinds of cause-related marketing as well as the examples shown in the comments section of an earlier CRM post on the course blog (links below). The second reading for this assignment is a more recent article & interview with a CRM marketer (link below). Then you must come up with a cause-related marketing activity for your chosen client. Each class member needs to individually come up with their own idea. It can be in any of the CRM categories described in Inger Stole's article. You must describe your idea in great detail, provide a justification for it (why would it work for your client), and identify the exact category it belongs to.You must submit your individual ideas (they must all be different from each other) in a single Google document per group, by sharing it with drhodis@gmail.com. This means, one person in the group (the group leader or the contact person), must create a Google Document (Log into your Gmail, click on Documents on the top left, and then on Create new.The title should be group name Or the client name followed by CRM) and share it with everyone else in your group and me using the "Share" button at the top right side of the document (use of gmail addresses for sharing is preferred, everyone should have one by now). Once you shared the document with me, you do not have to share it again on the due date because I will automatically have access to it. All you have to do is make sure that you individually access the document and put in your responses to this assignment. You can access a Google document from anywhere using a browser as long as you have an internet connection. You can even access it from a smart phone, but the editing feature will not work on some smart devices. Your work is automatically saved every few minutes, but before you exit it is always a good idea to hit save just in case.

Here is a suggested format for the document:

Group name - CRM Assignment

Name 1
 CRM idea.....
   Name 2
CRM idea...
   Name 3
CRM Idea etc.

To summarize, here are the steps and links for completing this individual assignment:
1. Read "Cause-Related Marketing: Why Social Change and Corporate Profits Don't Mix" by Inger Stole (http://www.prwatch.org/node/4965 )
2. Read the examples following this article in the previous CRM post on the class blog (http://introduction2marketing.blogspot.com/2010/02/cause-related-marketing-to-profit-or.html )
3. Read: Cause-Related Marketing: Just Plain Ol' Marketing? (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rachael-chong/cause-related-marketing-j_b_409633.html )
4. One group member creates a Google document and shares it with everyone in the group & the instructor (drhodis@gmail.com).
5. Each group member accesses the document whenever he/she wants to work on their idea. You can type it in directly and modify it as you need to, or you can finish it in a word document and just copy-paste it. It is up to you...


All ideas must be finished and in the document before the deadline, Tuesday, Sept 20th, 11:59pm (midnight). 
Points: 35

If you have any further questions about the assignment, I encourage you to use the Comments section below.  

Welcome to Marketing!

Welcome to the Fall 2011 Section for Intro to Marketing! While Blackboard remains our main repository for course related information (syllabus, project outline, lecture notes, etc.), this blog will serve an essential function. The previous posts are a collection of project resource and assignment examples (including the students' answers), so feel free to take a look around. We will refer to some of these past examples to aide you in preparing individual assignments. Over the course of the semester, information helpful for your assignments as well as the group marketing plan will be posted on this blog. I strongly encourage you to use the comments sections for all future posts for any questions you might have, or for contributing any additional information you think your classmates might find useful. It is just another way for us to stay in touch and keep up with the material outside of the scheduled class time and office hours.

Now, your first task for this course is to create a Gmail address if you don't already have one. Your second task will be to find 3 other students and form a group (see syllabus for details and deadlines).