cause-marketing
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Countable and the Civic App That Became a Company Town Square
Countable taught people to speak to Congress. Then it discovered that companies, causes and campaigns wanted a way to listen - and to turn that conversation into action.
Sherry Matthews Put Advertising on the Side of the Public Good
One trip to Big Bend convinced an Austin agency founder to dismiss her real-estate roster and make persuasion serve the public. The same instinct later sent her into an archive, where more than 50 neglected voices were waiting.
The Woman Who Closed Two Businesses to Build One Brand
Virginia Martino made an unfashionable bet: strategy, design, media, PR and digital work better when they sit at the same table. Twenty-six years later, BRAND's most revealing work begins where the usual advertising playbook runs out of road.
The Movie Ends. Picture Motion Starts.
Most film marketing tries to get you into a seat. This unusual agency is paid to decide what you should do after you stand up.
The Agency That Put the Public in Public Relations
Most agencies sell products. Sherry Matthews Group sells the harder thing: a change of mind - about vaccines, seat belts, transit, tobacco and the planet.
The Client That Never Left
Knoodle started with one client, no agency experience and a commercial that got the wrong kind of attention. More than 25 years later, that same client is still the clearest explanation of how the Phoenix firm works.
When the Cell Towers Went Quiet, SalterMitchell PR Reached for Paper
A Tallahassee consultancy built its edge by knowing one state unusually well. Its best lesson arrived after a Category 5 hurricane, when the smartest communications technology turned out to be a flyer taped beside a portable restroom.
The Agency That Put the Audience Inside the Advertisement
Mighty Engine discovered that the people usually called an audience can be the sharpest strategists in the room. Twenty-five years of campaigns show what happens when a creative agency listens before it speaks.
The Marketing Agency That Planted the Brief
Haberman grew a marketing agency by insisting that a good story must survive contact with a farm, a focus group and a sales chart. Thirty-two years later, its most persuasive product may be the habit of changing course.
The Agency That Thinks Like a Press Box
Tony Fay Public Relations built a national agency by treating publicity less like promotion and more like deadline journalism - find the angle, assemble the assets, and give the story somewhere useful to go.
The Ad Agency That Put Purpose on the P&L
OBERLAND sells an unfashionably demanding proposition: a brand can take a stand and still make the numbers work. The interesting part is not the promise. It is the receipts.
The Agency That Made Staying Close a Business Model
For nearly three decades, Carol and Lonnie Chenkin have sold clients something larger agencies struggle to package: memory, proximity, and the promise that the people pitching the work will stay close enough to finish it.
The Artemis Agency Knows Fame Is Only Useful When You Give It a Job
A small Los Angeles firm works in the narrow space between a famous person who cares and a cause that needs more than a famous face. Its trick is to turn attention into an assignment.
Alternative Strategies knows what a salad can do
A San Diego agency turns restaurant relationships into publicity, coordinated campaigns, and checks for good causes. Its most useful trick is getting everyone to work from the same menu.
Shelter PR knows the star is only half the story
A celebrity has a career to protect. A film, a cause or a beer brand has something to launch. Shelter Public Relations works where those stories meet.
Wolf | Kasteler and the art of making attention useful
Magazine covers are the visible part. Behind them, Wolf | Kasteler connects artists, films and causes with the audiences that can do something next.
Cause Communications wants your good work to travel further
A free toolkit, six-month learning cohorts, and a willingness to hand communities the microphone: inside the Los Angeles firm that treats communications as a skill worth sharing.
The NALA gave local businesses something worth talking about
A shoe drive, a neighborhood news story, a name remembered at the checkout. The Ventura agency built its pitch around the everyday places where local reputations take shape.
HelpGood knows a good cause needs a better invitation
A bear, a pair of Nobel laureates, and a campaign with no paid media budget: inside the agency that turns worthy causes into things people actually join.
Eyes of the World Media Group makes the complicated watchable
A Culver City studio put brain science, engineering ethics and world population data into forms people could actually use. Its most revealing product comes in three parts.
Oster and Associates Knows What a Banana Is Worth
The San Diego agency has spent decades giving plants, produce, and good causes a reason to be remembered. Its produce work starts with a deceptively small question: why pick this one?
Jason Hausske Wants Generosity to Feel as Easy as Sharing a Playlist
The Boise founder spent decades learning how people buy. With Cauze, he is applying those lessons to a harder question: what makes people give, return, and bring their friends?
The Startup Turning Charity Into a Feed You Actually Want to Scroll
Jason Hausske wants giving to feel less like a year-end tax chore and more like a habit you post about. His bet: philanthropy grows when it stops being private.
Dana Seguin
Dana Seguin is Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer at Altar'd State, the fast-growing Knoxville-based women's fashion retailer, where she leads all creative, marketing and eCommerce work across its family of brands - Altar'd State, Arula, Vow'd, Tullabee and AS Revival. A brand builder with roughly 25 years in retail and fashion, she began in merchandising at American Eagle Outfitters before moving into creative marketing for SPANX, Chico's and Aerie. She is best known for leading the creation and launch of the Aerie Real campaign, which stopped retouching model images and helped make body positivity a mainstream retail message.
Altar'd State
Altar'd State is a Knoxville, Tennessee-based women's fashion and lifestyle retailer founded in 2009 by Aaron Walters and Brian Mason, built around a simple structural choice: give a fixed slice of revenue away every week rather than treat philanthropy as a marketing line item. Through its Mission Monday program, 10% of net proceeds from a designated day each week goes to a local nonprofit chosen by each individual store, a practice that has routed money to thousands of community organizations. The chain sells apparel, accessories, jewelry, gifts and home decor in boutique-style stores in malls and lifestyle centers across roughly 39 states, and online at altardstate.com. Altar'd State is the flagship of parent company Stand Out For Good, Inc., which also operates Arula (mid- and plus-size), Vow'd Weddings (bridal), Tullabee (baby and toddler) and AS Revival (activewear), plus a majority stake in Los Angeles furniture maker Lawson-Fenning. Reported annual revenue is in the $500-570 million range with roughly 2,700 employees.
Good-Loop
Good-Loop is an ethical advertising technology company that turns ad spend into a force for good. Its 'view-to-donate' formats let people unlock a free charitable donation - funded by the advertiser - simply by choosing to watch an ad, while its Green Media tools measure and cut the carbon footprint of digital campaigns. A certified B Corporation founded in Edinburgh in 2016 by Amy Williams and Daniel Winterstein, Good-Loop has raised more than $6M for charities including Save the Children, WaterAid and WWF, and works with brands such as Unilever, Nestle, Levi's and Asics.
Change
Change is a San Francisco fintech that lets businesses plug charitable giving directly into their products. Its Donations API and compliance dashboard connect companies to more than a million U.S. nonprofits, automating the tedious parts of giving - nonprofit verification, fund disbursement, and the tangle of state fundraising regulations like California's AB 488. Companies such as Lyft, Brex, and Bonfire use Change to run round-ups, sweepstakes, loyalty-point donations, and percentage-of-purchase campaigns without building giving infrastructure themselves.
Sonia Nigam
Sonia Nigam is the co-founder and CEO of Change, a San Francisco fintech that turns charitable giving into a few lines of code. Brands drop a Change button into checkout and the company handles the unglamorous machinery behind it - vetting, compliance, and disbursement across more than 200,000 nonprofits. A Northwestern computer science and business grad who engineered frictionless payments at Braintree and Venmo, Nigam quit her job at the start of the pandemic to build the donations API she wished existed. She and co-founder Amar Shah landed on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list for social impact and raised a $5M seed round to bring giving on-chain.
Beam Impact
Beam Impact is a New York-based social impact technology company that helps e-commerce and retail brands turn everyday purchases into measurable charitable giving. Through an embeddable checkout integration and consumer app, Beam lets shoppers choose a vetted nonprofit at checkout while the brand donates a portion of the sale at no extra cost to the customer. Founded by Forbes 30 Under 30 honorees Viveka Hulyalkar and Alex Sadhu, the platform pairs mission-driven brands with high-impact causes to lift conversion, average order value, and repeat purchase rates - while pursuing a goal of shifting $10B toward nonprofits.
Viveka Hulyalkar
Viveka Hulyalkar is the co-founder and CEO of Beam Impact, a New York customer engagement and loyalty platform that lets shoppers direct a slice of everyday purchases to nonprofits at no extra cost. A McKinsey alum and Brown honors graduate, she set out to fix what she calls broken retention marketing by tying brand loyalty to the causes young consumers actually care about. Beam works with 130+ mission-driven brands including Instacart, IKEA and Roots Canada, and Hulyalkar's stated goal is to shift $10 billion from brands to high-impact nonprofits. She is a Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree in Social Impact.