AMPERAGE Marketing & Fundraising

One-Minute MarketerDo Consumers Care About Caring Brands?

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Do Consumers Care About Caring Brands?

One of my favorite “caring” brands is TOMS Shoes. Their tagline is, “Every Purchase Has A Purpose.”  TOMS donates shoes, sight and water to people in need. But does this benevolence matter?Toms blog

According to Havas Meaningful Brands 2017, 75% of global consumers “expect brands to contribute to our well-being and quality of life.” A Cone Communications CRS Study found that 70% of US consumers believe companies should take actions to improve issues outside of the everyday business operations.

Nielsen (2015) and the Global Strategy Group (2016) as reported by AdWeek found that people do care about company caring:

  • 89% would be likely to switch to brands that associate with causes
  • 80% would support issues by buying from social conscious online retails
  • 88% would be more loyal to companies that support social or environmental causes
  • 66% would pay more for products from socially responsible companies

What is noteworthy is that millennial consumers are more likely than Gen Z, Gen X or boomers to expect brands to support issues they believe in. 75% of millennials reported they would be willing to take a pay cut to work for a socially responsible company.

So what is your brand purpose and can you define it as clearly as Toms does on their website? Does doing business with your organization provide empathy and purpose for the future? 89% of Gen Z and 85% of millennial consumers would buy from a company supporting social and environmental issues over one that doesn’t. Purpose branding is now coming of age.

Written by:

Mark wrote his first direct-mail fundraising letter in 1981 for the University of Iowa Center for Advancement. The effort raised a few million dollars in undiscovered wills and legacy gifts. From that day forward Mark discovered a love of the big idea that moves the needle.

After 12 years at KWWL, Mark became a business owner as a co-founder of ME&V — rebranded as AMPERAGE in 2015. After 25 years of leading creative teams in video production, graphic design, PR, writing and web development, Mark transitioned out of ownership in 2021. Today he serves in an employee role as special projects consultant.

He is creatively ambidextrous — son of an artist and engineer — and famous for distilling complex ideas down to a few words and a few visuals. Mark is a writer. When he found that many nonprofits struggled with complex branding puzzles, he wrote the book, “NonProfit-NonMarketing .” He also wrote a novel called “Reenactment.”

Mark is an active blogger OneMinuteMarketer® with nearly 1,000 readers each week on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter. One of his most popular YouTube videos is on “How to Look Good on Zoom.”

One of Mark’s fondest business memories was being named to INC 500 two times and attending the INC 500 conference with other winners. Mark is considered by some a Civil War expert (and that explains his novel). Mark also served as an adjunct professor in the business and in the communications departments at Wartburg College.

Mark is a graduate of the University of Iowa and is currently vice president of the University of Iowa Journalism and Mass Communications Advisory Board.

Mark is married to state Sen. Liz Mathis, and the two love to travel, even when it means being trapped by a volcano in the Czech Republic for three weeks.