At last night's San Francisco American Marketing Association :

Robert Duncan of Duncan Channon talked about how Cause Marketing is really about navigating between cause and marketing and if you veer too much toward one or the other, you’ve failed.

Marcus Chung, Senior Manager, Social Responsibility Strategic Planning and Communications at the Gap debunked a lot of the criticism about the Gap’s Red Campaign. What hasn’t gotten captured, is the amount of excitement and energy the program has created among Gap’s sales associates and how much visibility and awareness the entire campaign has raised among mall rats.

Then Gil Friend, CEO of Natural Logic dropped the bomb. Gils’ my new hero. He believes that Cause Marketing is just a drop in the bucket. Nothing wrong with it, but it misses the full potential that corporations have in the world. Gil’s entire premise is that we’ve all bought into a myth: the myth is that what’s good for our world is not good for business. (Chip Heath, my other new hero references Gil in his Made to Stick presentation.)

Most businesses have priorities backwards:

1. Shareholders
2. Customers
3. Employees (often employees are further down the list)

Gil uses the example of Whole Foods philosophy.

1. Employees – happy employees produce good output
2. Customers – Customers see happy employees, enjoy their results, buy product
3. Shareholders – Company makes money, Wall Street is happy

Shareholders are like utility companies for money. No business would say it exists to pay to keep the lights on. Likewise, shareholders provide something useful to the company (money), but the purpose of the company's existence should be the company's mission.

Unfortunately, Gil had to run off before the Q&A.

Just as businesses need to become environmentally friendly to be more profitible, I believe that companies need to tap into underserved markets and become more profitible.