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Canadians Emerging as Cause Marketing Leaders

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Cause marketing's roots may be American (a Great America/March of Dimes partnership  and the American Express Statue of Liberty campaign vie for earliest program status), but Canada nowadays is emerging as a consumer-facing corporate citizenship powerhouse.

As we've prepared to launch the first Companies & Causes Canada conference, we've identified three fascinating trends:

1) Deep Penetration:  Canada may not field as many cause-related programs at one time as we see in the US, but the number of programs that break through to become part of the national dialogue is stunning.   A few examples:

Tim Hortons Camp Day Tim Hortons is the place where Canadians go for their daily coffee break.   Nearly Canadian knows that each year on the first Wednesday of June franchisees donate 100% of coffee sales to the Tim Horton Children's Foundation.  The program is so popular that lines run out the door at many locations on Camp Day.  This year the event raised $11.8 million.   Since 1974, this and other fundraising programs have enable more than 180,000 disadvantaged youth to attend foundation-run summer camps.

Canadian Tire Jumpstart Almost unknown outside Canada, Canadian Tire is Canada's largest retailer with over 490 outlets selling a wide range of merchandise beyond tires.  Since 2005, Canadian Tire has focused its community outreach efforts to helping disadvantaged kids with the financial support they need to get involved in youth sports. Fundraising activities such as selling $2 red ball icons at checkout, have enabled the company to assist over 750,000 kids. By a wide margin, Canadian corporate citizenship professionals said this was the program they most admired in a recent poll we conducted.

 2) Tackling Tough Issues Canadian companies embrace many of the same causes as their US counterparts such as breast cancer, and hunger, but it's fascinating to see how they've embraced the issue of mental health, a topic almost untouched by American business.

Leading the pack is Bell, Canada's largest telecommunications company. Since 2011, Bell Let's Talk initiative has invested tens of millions in a broad variety of programs to break the silence around mental illness and support mental health.  Each year on Bell Let's Talk Day, the company gets millions of consumers involved by offering to donate 5 cents for every text, mobile call, and long distance call by its customers every tweet using #BellLetsTalk, and every Facebook share of the Bell Let’s Talk Day. In 2014 that unlocked a record $5,472,585.90 in funding.

3) Experimentation In addition to tried and true approaches, Canada is fertile ground for cause experimentation.  A few examples:

The "Evolution" video that made Dove's global Campaign for Real Beauty a global phenomenon was created by Ogilvy & Mather's Toronto office

Canadian telecommunications company TELUS has won several Cause Marketing Halo Awards for its innovative campaigns including its multifaceted 2013 collaboration with WWF Canada that included interactive transit shelter ads and a Twitter-powered vending machine full of fundraising plush pandas.

Free The Children/Me to We/We Day - This family of international nonprofit and social enterprise organizations is doing groundbreaking work getting young people involved in social action and supporting international development.   Corporate partners like Ford, RBC and Telus report that Free The Children's professional approach to creating high-impact win-win partnerships is world class.  Having incubated its model in Canada since 1995,  the group is expanding into the UK and USA.

Canadian Citizenship Professionals Weigh In

Like their counterparts around the world, Canadian corporate citizenship leaders continue to work hard to migrate their work to the core of their companies' consciousness.  A recent survey we conducted of Canadian citizenship executives in industries from mining to retail revealed that nearly 7 out of 10 ranked “Determining Business ROI” as an essential topic to explore. Half also gave top priority to “Measuring Social Impact”.

The results of the survey will shape the program at Companies & Causes Canada on October 28 t in Toronto where we’ll go behind-the-scenes of Canadian cause efforts to reveal best practices and lessons learned.  With attendance already confirmed from CIBC, Manulife, Public Inc., RBC, Scotiabank, Shoppers Drug Mart and TELUS, its sure to be a robust discussion.