Feeding the Moral Hunger: Strategic Social Marketing for the Greater Good?
A trend our team has witnessed for the past nine months is the growing prevalence of cause-related marketing efforts from financial services institutions. A recent article on Slate.com focuses on American Express’s most recent “dogooder” initiative, the American Express Members Project.
Without question, these efforts are in part attempts by banks and other financial institutions to generate some goodwill after being publicly flayed by consumers, the press, the federal government, state governments and on and on. But it is also related to what Katherine Fulton, president of the Monitor Institute” labels “Moral Hunger,” a nationwide uptick in empathy summed up this way by our own Paige Fleury:
What was a society of consumption, collection and live-for-today is now a more pragmatic, empathetic and forward-looking group whose behaviors from spending and saving to brand choice and outlook add up to a new moral hunger - a desire to do good.