How to pitch your cause: 3 lessons from CMF

I’m at the Cause Marketing Forum and one of the more interesting sessions was The Perfect Pitch.  Three marketers and cause advocates were asked to pitch a cause (Citizen Schools) to a potential corporate partner on why they should care - and take a meeting about a cause marketing campaign.

Here are the three factors that made for a winning pitch.

1. Audience: Making it about the partner’s interests.  The strongest pitches showed the cause had done its homework on the corporation and framed the issue according to the company’s and person’s perspective.  The winning pitcher Mollye Rhea took the angle of “this issue matters, it is close to people’s hearts and no one in the insurance industry owns it.  That’s an opportunity for you.”

2. Emotion: Getting to the heart of your cause and why it matters to people personally.  It’s important to reach the heart not just the mind.  The best pitches conveyed passion around why the nonprofit’s programs for middle schoolers make a difference on a human level.  That means getting away from jargon and homing in on meaning.  You’ve got to awaken the heart to open the mind to your business case.
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3. Bottom Line: Talking about how the cause drives business interests in addition to social good. The best pitches made a case for what’s in it for the corporation: a way to draw a distinction from competitors, a way to build employee engagement and a means to boost the brand.

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