Frugal Youth Marketing: Using Music To Promote Your Cause

When we think about cause marketing, we often think about how brands can help causes and vice versa. One of the biggest challenges non-profits have is getting the word out about what they do—especially if it’s a grassroots, scrappy non-profit doing great work but with very little money or staff experienced in PR, never mind having no budget to advertise. With everyone competing for shrinking funding from foundations and brands for their pro-social efforts, it might be time to get creative and put your frugal youth marketing hat on. Youth + music = happiness. Young people love music and music is a great way to reach young people with your cause. Some folks working in the L.A. music business get this and have created a very cool organization to help non-profits link up with artists called Plays Well With Others. From their email:

Our purpose is threefold:

1) Introduce people to bands

2) Introduce people to the causes that those bands care about

3) Create an ongoing involvement with people and those bands/causes through both online marketing and real world experiences

We are planning a series of ongoing shows to raise awareness about different socially active causes and organizations…We are also partnering with bands and record labels to help publicize the organizations that are important to them and to show their fans ways that they can become more involved in their communities.

If you are a non-profit looking for frugal ways to reach youth, consider using music to promote your cause and definitely check out Plays Well With Others.