Organisations advocating gay & lesbian causes, welfare reforms or planned parenthood with pro-choice agendas do not have corporations lining up at their doorsteps .
Desire not to repel consumers, cause marketers are very sensitive to groups or causes that might prove even slightly controversial
At times, however, ill-conceived cause marketing efforts slip through the cracks and there are those times when even the promotional industry believes that businesses have crossed the line of good taste.
Procter & Gamble's cause marketing campaign with Give Kids the World, and org that helps terminally ill children and their families take vacations
-Campaign commercials showed terminally ill children playing in the Florida sun and explained how viewers, through purchase-triggered donations, could help sustain the program.
-Advertising Age magazine said the effort left a bad taste.
-Nobody seems too troubled that the supposed corporate philanthropy isn't philanthropic at all; it is a licensing agreement, promotional tie-in tying into rain forests and hunger and sick kids in place of Tarzan and Star Wars. Campaigns not only exploited the emotions of the families involves, it exploited the emotions of the viewers. Using the image of terminally ill children to get a spike in diaper sales is unspeakable perverse, no matter who benefits.