I was watching TV the other day (as I do) and saw this great commercial for The Laughing Cow cheese. First of all, I eat the stuff. It’s a great low calorie snack. Love that. But this commercial had a twist: for each Laughing Cow or Babybel cheese wheel you buy, you can go to their site, input the UPC code, and they’ll donate $1 for each to the Life Well Laughed project.

They’re trying to get to $500,000 for the donations, but reading between the lines, they’re trying to sell 500,000 items. Great story.

I thought it was a clever idea so I had to try it out. Here’s what happened.

I went to the Laughing Cow site and their offer was pretty prominent, front and center.

I clicked through to input my UPC code and there was a nice explanation of what they’re trying to do, along with a counter of how much they’ve received so far. They’ve got a long way to go but I think this might be a pretty new promotion. Let’s hope.

I entered the UPC code on the back of the packaging and got the following screen.

Great idea for building an email list. They ask for this information so that the next time you want to do this after you buy more, you can easily sign in. They also ask if you want to sign up for the newsletter. Of course I did! I’m awaiting my first Laughing Cow email marketing campaign any minute now.

After I donated, I got the following screen thanking me.

The great thing about this screen is it’s asking me to either email my friends, post it to Facebook or post it to Twitter. For this I chose Facebook.

When I went back a few minutes later the ticker had changed to 2951. Nice move.

My only riff on this? There was a limit to one per day per customer, they don’t have it on their packaging (yet) and I could only choose one social media outlet to put it on. I’d love to have done all three!

So the net of this experience is that your business can do this and it doesn’t have to be that involved. Here’s how:

• Figure out what cause you’d like to donate to for every purchase made and how much of the purchase.
• Put it on your packaging (if applicable) and on your website.
• Promote it on Facebook, Twitter and to your email marketing lists.
• Promote how much you’ve donated weekly.
• Ask your customers to promote it for you on their social networks.

Are you doing cause marketing? We’d love to hear how it’s working for you!

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