Joe Waters

For Watch City Brewing Company's owner Jocelyn Hughes and brewers Aaron Mateychuk and Kelly McKnight, it all started with a desire to help a family that...

I write a lot about the important role emotion plays in cause marketing. If you don't lead with emotion, you're toast. I also talk a lot about mobile technology, which will be a key driver of cause marketing in the years ahead. But here's the rub: Emotion and smartphones...

You gotta love this QR code marketing program from Planned Parenthood of Greater Northwest. They distributed 55,000 condoms to colleges in western Washington state with QR codes that when scanned went to a sex check-in site called...

One site I'm committed to spending more time on in the new year is the virtual pinboard Pinterest. It's easy to use, powerfully visual, populated with cause marketing-loving women and growing like crazy. 4,000 percent in six months!

The heavy presence of women 25-44 on...

Here are my picks for the best local cause marketing programs of 2011. My criteria for picking these promotions wasn't based on dollars raised, but on how well they represented the potential for local cause marketing. In short, these programs inspired me and made me proud to be a cause...

The Arby's Foundation, the giving arm of Arby's Restaurant Group, the second largest sandwich shop chain in the United States, did something last week that rivals the good deeds of Santa Claus himself. It gave Share Our Strength's (SOS) No Kid Hungry campaign $2 million dolllars.

Arby's customers kicked...

I love Christmastime! There's classic music like Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer, time with friends and family (minus grandma), lots of delicious baked goods from my wife and, yes, presents!

I've already gotten some great gifts: five cause marketing promotions that keep me believing in the spirit...

Radio Shack reminds me of a lot of the local, scrappy nonprofits I work with. The Shack is big -- nearly 4,500 company-operated stores -- but it has a local feel to it. Maybe it's because you'll find them in local malls, strip malls and downtown business districts.

With competitors...

Whatever challenges, misfortunes and problems you faced this year, I bet you still have something to be thankful for on Thanksgiving. Maybe it's just the fact that you're alive!

I know I'm thankful for a lot of things. After all the important stuff, I'm thankful for...

I've talked a lot about the coming of mobile payments and their intersection with cause marketing on both my blog and at speaking appearances. It's something I'm really excited about. But up to now there hadn't been any sign in the water of this huge beast that would...

I'm fascinated by the whole food truck phenomenon. We have a number of food trucks here in Boston and I just finished watching The Great Food Truck Race on The Food Network. I'm also in Los Angeles all week for the Blogworld Expo and am hoping to sample some...

At almost $7 billion in sales, Halloween is a frighteningly successful holiday -- second only to Christmas in consumer spending. But for fundraisers, Jack Skellington's Halloween is #1.

Halloween is social. Halloween isn't the family holiday that Thanksgiving and Christmas are. Parents parade their kids out in...

I love zombie films.

I can't get enough of them, especially around Halloween when the shadows from the leafless trees take on ominous shapes. Yikes!

While you may not share my love for the semi-dead, you might agree with this: most of us are surrounded by these mute, will-less, dumb,...

It's something that comes up again and again. Will consumers buy a product or use a service just because it supports a cause?

I don't buy it, and fizzled experiments from Causeon to Edun to CauseWorld to GoodSearch show that while consumers do indeed want a...

Selfish Giving and Cone Communications, a leading public relations and marketing agency that specializes in cause marketing, are teaming up to share our top "pinktober" cause marketing promotions. October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month and companies are partnering with breast cancer charities on a variety of...

My friend David Neff is a pretty incredible guy. He's an author. He's a fright master during the Halloween season. And he starts cool things like Lights. Camera. Help., a nonprofit that helps other nonprofit use film and video to tell...

Last week I was meeting with a friend and talking cause marketing, of course. He explained he had recently seen a cause marketing promotion between the Arthritis Foundation and Massage Envy and thought it was a great partnership. Massage Envy customers, Arthritis sufferers and their supporters would benefit from...

Last Tuesday, A Day Made Better celebrated its fifth anniversary by surprising 1,000...

These large organizations with their national...

Facebook made some interesting changes last week that may help evolve how nonprofits and businesses use Facebook "likes" for cause marketing. The change should shake up how organizations weigh the meaning/worth of a Facebook "like."

All of us have seen Facebook cause marketing programs before. If you "like" the nonprofit's...