While corporate social responsibility is an internal function, cause-related marketing (AKA—cause marketing) is a strategic business tool that, when used in an authentic and sustainable fashion, can help the cause and the company. In other words, by doing good, a company can also do well.

More and more businesses are realizing how important it is to soften the corporate image and align themselves with charities. It is a well-known fact, made clear through consumer surveys, that these affiliations influence behavior and help businesses achieve their marketing objectives. The benefits of cause marketing are vast and include increased sales, strengthened customer loyalty and improved employee relations. Plus, cause-related marketing can quell a looming media crisis (e.g., Microsoft and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation) in relatively short time.

But companies need to be careful about the sincerity of their efforts. True cause marketing can never be a short-term tactic. To adopt a charity in December and never mention it again until the following year is a true recipe for disaster.

This past holiday season, while working on my newest book, The Cause Marketing Handbook: How Doing Good Means Doing Well, I commissioned a survey polling over 2,500 U.S. adults through Harris Interactive. It revealed that nearly half the population is skeptical of corporations that advertise during the holiday season about charitable giving—taking out, for example, full-page consumer ads touting their good deeds in the weeks before Christmas and Hanukah.

Today’s consumer is savvier than ever and knows when marketing communications are genuine—or opportunistic. One-off giving, used on corporate ad campaigns sometimes even unbeknownst to the causes they claim to support (see the New York Times, December 16, 2007), are short-lived and must be replaced by strategic partnerships based on solid motives. With this approach, all will benefit and the consumer will feel genuinely good about their purchases.