Is Buyral Marketing good CSR?

I just made up that term. I needed something to describe the proliferation of campaigns that buy social spread by promising to donate for each "like" or "RT" received.

Here's today's example:

"Zinc Saves Lives" is the corporate social responsibility brand of Teck Resources, a mining company that specializes in copper, coal and zinc. So by retweeting this post, you're acting as a free social media promoter for the mining company, as well as potentially saving a child's life.

When I see these campaigns, I can't help but by cynical. That's because I know how they work.

You see, most big corporations have a social responsibility strategy, both to enhance their brand and to earn social licence (that is, community support) in the regions in which they operate. These activities have a set budget, a chunk of which is earmarked for conspicuous corporate giving to a relevant cause.

In the case of Tek, it takes the form of "We Day":



You can see the actual donation budget if you look at the fine print:

Teck will donate CAD$0.50 for every retweet of the designated We Day tweet, up to a maximum total for each We Day event (CAD$20,000 for Toronto, CAD$20,000 for Vancouver, CAD$10,000 for Alberta, CAD$5,000 for Montreal and CAD$5,000 for Ottawa). The total donation from Teck for the entire campaign is capped at CAD$60,000.

So, Tek has budgeted a $60,000 gift to "Zinc Saves Kids, an initiative of the International Zinc Association in support of UNICEF." But instead of just giving their trade association the money (to enhance its reputation, too) Tek is emotionally blackmailing Twitter slacktivists to do their advertising for them — for free. Instead of the limited PR they get for just handing over a lump sum, they engage large numbers of social media do-gooders to spread their goodwill all over the internet.

Here's another example of buyral marketing, from the pharmaceutical industry (via Osocio):

In this case, a simple repinning of the image gets a hefty $10 donation to the Breast Cancer Society of Canada. All you have to do is help Bayer spread their one-a-day brand all over Pinterest.

And once again, there is a maximum. The donation cap is $30,000.

This isn't a particularly bad thing. Charities need private donations, and people love to feel like they're saving the world. But people need to know what they're being asked to do, and by who.

Are you concerned with the ethics of buyral marketing? Add your comment below.

Smarter people than me are also fascinated by it

Sex in advertising, that is.

Lisa Wade, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Occidental College and a blogger at Sociological Images. As she often takes on the issue of sex and sexism in advertising and other media, we often end up sharing links.

The most recent one she shared (via Facebook) is a Pinterest board of ads that use subliminal, and not so subliminal, sexual symbolism.

And by "not subliminal", she means stuff like this:

And this:

And...

Some are subversive:

Others are rather creative:

As an educator, Lisa provides links to analyses of the images. As an adman (and ad critic), I find this both useful and entertaining. Here's hoping the Sexual Symbolism board will continue to expand, and that people will actually learn to make and/or identify better ads because of it.

Pornterest

Today, Buzzfeed published an amusing post about how the word "porn" is used on Pinterest (a social scrapbooking site where people gather favourite online images) to describe anything they like looking at.

And not just the trendy term "food porn" either:

"Fishing Gear Porn"

"Word Porn"

"Real Estate Porn"

What I found particularly amusing about this (besides the fact that someone innocently called their board "dog porn") is that this morning Jezebel had a post about the actual Pinterest of Porn, called "Snatchly". (The link is safe — it goes to a signup page.)

Worlds are colliding. Or, rather, "words".

But let's just hope this overuse of the p-word doesn't end in tragedy, when an innocent sweet tooth in need of some delicious Pudding Porn ends up instead conjuring up two girls and a cup over on the wrong network.