Traditionally it was thought that women were the target audience for cause-related marketing. Marketers created campaigns to pull at the heart strings of women and have left out men from cause campaigns entirely, but a recent PR Week/Barkley PR Cause Survey shows that men care about causes practically as much as women do.

The survey found that 88 percent of men believe it is important for a company to support a cause, as compared to the 91 percent of women that hold the same belief. The apparent evening of the scales may be attributed to a generational shift—of the respondents to the survey— those from the Millennial Generation see cause relating as a necessary social responsibility, the issue is no longer a gender issue, but now it may be a generational concern.

The PR Week and Barkley survey cites the three causes that men are more likely to support are:

1. Causes that affect children
2. General health-related causes
3. Poverty-related causes

How should this survey change marketing’s focus for men in cause-related marketing efforts in the future, especially for healthcare marketers?

More than half of the respondents to the survey said they were willing to pay more for a brand or a product because it supported a cause important to them. The survey also showed that cause-related marketers have not caught up to these stats because it showed that 68 percent of corporate marketing executives said they had no plans to include men with their cause efforts. In light of these new findings, maybe the best strategy for the upcoming years will be to create marketing campaigns that are gender-neutral or to focus cause marketing on male brands as well as targeting female audiences.

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