Social Impact

Social impact, cause marketing and CSR solutions drive our festival consulting and experiential marketing services.

Experience

Deeper Connections

If experiences help you connect, social impact closes the loop and widens your net. Gen Z and Millennials want festivals and brands to solve problems and elevate communities. Our services deliver social impact marketing, cause marketing and corporate social responsibility (CSR) solutions.
Sierra Nevada, Forecastle Foundation :::300,000 reached

Identify

We believe festivals and brands can better communities. We work to identify social impact partnerships that reach beyond one-dimensional, transactional relationships to impactful, long-term partnerships. There’s power in pairs and we remove boundaries to unlock potential.

Strategize

Our strategy builds a bridge that builds a new brand. It implements learnings from decades of experience in social impact marketing, cause marketing, and corporate social responsibility. We dive deeper, reach further, and unearth a common currency that betters lives and elevates communities.

Architect

Once the social impact partnership is identified, we design a corporate philanthropy structural blueprint that charts the way to a blue ocean of opportunity - new customers for the business, new verticals for the nonprofit. You now have a social impact platform to reach unreachables, and engage them in a deep, meaningful way.

Implement

With the match made and plan in place, it’s time to implement our social impact blueprint. Successful social impact partnerships create value-generating verticals, dynamic growth opportunities, and brand superfans you will find additive to your PR, Marketing Sales and corporate social responsibility plans.

Manage

The focus now turns to managing and optimizing, solving the problems of today and foreshadowing the ones of tomorrow. Successful nonprofit partnerships are catalytic to both parties. They provide real world utility, tackling problems our increasingly polarized planet cannot. This is what social impact is all about.

Measure

We measure your social impact in real time, providing you with the metrics that matter, so you know your community investment is working and can promote it internally and externally through cause marketing and social impact marketing channels.
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Case Studies

Successful social impact partnerships make an enduring community investment that delivers dynamic value, meaningful corporate social responsibility and cause marketing that builds brand equity. With the case studies below, we tied and aligned common interests to help businesses reach new customers and nonprofits expand their revenue verticals.

Four Roses and Forecastle Foundation craft a business nonprofit corporate partnership
Social Impact Partnership :::Bourbon Cares

Bourbon Cares

Mission:

Introduce 30,000 new consumers to Kentucky Bourbon Trail brands, while providing a new revenue vertical for the Kentucky Natural Lands Trust to protect critical Kentucky wildlands.

Strategy:

Design an engaging experiential marketing activation that partners bourbon brands with touring bands inside the Forecastle Festival. Design a “turn-of-the-century rickhouse meets prohibition-era speakeasy” and invite bands to sample single-barrel selections from their favorite brands. Pair Woodford Reserve, Four Roses, Old Forester, Heaven Hill and Wild Turkey with artists like Alabama Shakes, My Morning Jacket, Band of Horses, Spoon, and more. Invite artists to serve drinks to their biggest fans, with community investment proceeds going to protect critical watersheds and old-growth forests.

Results:

The participating brands received a powerful PR, corporate social responsibility and social impact marketing partnership that yielded new consumers and strong retail sales at no cost, other than allocating a single-barrel to the program (which was paid for by the concessionaire). Kentucky Natural Lands Trust raised thousands to protect critical watersheds and wildlands corridors. For the festival, an impactful experiential marketing activation and community giveback was born, which grew from 900 to 15,000 square ft. The sheer volume of new consumers it attracted led Forecastle to be recognized as “Bourbon’s Most Important Festival” by Wall Street Journal best-selling author Fred Minnick.

Experience It
Sierra Nevada’s Chantey IPA - a business nonprofit partnership and experiential marketing campaign with Forecastle Foundation
Social Impact Partnership :::Sierra Nevada

Sierra Nevada

Mission:

Inspired by the Sierra Nevada mountain range, craft a new product line that protects the world’s most breathtaking environments.

Strategy:

Pair Sierra Nevada with The Forecastle Foundation for a program that delivers a strong community investment and corporate social responsibility message. Under the direction of Steve Grossman (brother of Sierra Nevada founder Ken Grossman) craft a limited-edition, community giveback expression with a powerful corporate philanthropy arm. Prior to product launch, design a on and off-premise PR, cause marketing and retail strategy to build anticipation and maximize its social impact. Following the campaign, debut the product before 400 media outlets and 75,000 fans at Forecastle Festival - its unique, collaborative story told at each POS location.

Results:

A flagship festival product is born, The Close Call Kolsch, and social Impact marketing campaign that reaches new consumers and rewards Sierra Nevada and key retail partners with exclusive product, earned media, sales and memorable on-site festival engagements. For the Forecastle Foundation, the social impact partnership helped raise thousands to protect critical wildlife corridors from Argentina to Indonesia, Belize to Florida.

Experience It
Heine Brothers and Forecastle Foundation partner with Whole Foods to forge corporate partnerships with nonprofits
Social Impact Partnership :::Kentucky Dream

Whole Foods & Heine Brothers

Mission:

If experiences help you connect, social impact closes the loop and widens your net. Gen Z and Millennials want festivals and brands to solve problems and elevate communities. Our services deliver social impact marketing, cause marketing and corporate social responsibility (CSR) solutions.

Strategy:

Pair national retailer Whole Foods with local coffee purveyor Heine Brothers on a unique, proprietary, community giveback blend titled “Kentucky Dream.” Leverage Heine Brother’s extensive Central American grower relationships while partnering with Whole Foods’ corporate social responsibility, cause marketing and corporate philanthropy team. Maximum awareness through a targeted PR and social impact marketing campaign across retail and non-profit channels to share the story and reach new consumers in the hypercompetitive coffee and grocery segments

Results:

Thousands of new consumers patronized Whole Foods following a press conference announcing the strategically-aligned nonprofit partnership and local/global focus. For independent coffee purveyor Heine Brothers, the cause marketing campaign delivered a heightened level of consumer engagement, reinforcing its commitment to the communities in which it operates, while keeping its company fresh and relevant, and loyal consumers invigorated. For the Forecastle Foundation, a new revenue vertical to protect Kentucky’s Green River and Pine Mountain Wildlands Corridor.

Experience It
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Why It Works

GEN Z AND MILLENNIALS

Research shows Gen Z and Millennials are strongly motivated to support brands driven by purpose and causes greater than self-interests. Successful social impact partnerships are less transactional and one-dimensional, and more enduring, dynamic and mutually beneficial.

BIGGER THAN BRANDING

Smile like you mean it. If you want consumers to wear your brand like a badge, think past your brand. Solve a problem. Improve a life. Enhance a community. Successful social impact partnerships accomplish this and so much more.

EXPERIENCE MATTERS

For nearly twenty years, we designed successful corporate social responsibility programs and social impact partnerships for businesses and nonprofits seeking an impactful and mutually beneficial festival integration. Strategically tied and aligned, we know what it takes to artfully architect successful brand partnerships.

BUILD THE BRIDGE

We identify, design, and deploy impactful corporate charity partnerships that implement cause marketing, social impact marketing, and corporate social responsibility solutions that reach broader networks, new consumer segments, and diversified revenue verticals. Together we help bridge the business nonprofit partnership divide.

"A gifted entrepreneur and trendsetter in our business and philanthropic community, JK has an engaging way of bringing people together to support one another in impactful and inspiring ways. His creative and collaborative approach around social impact and corporate social responsibility is meaningful and methodical, unlocking intrinsic value and inventive solutions."

:: Rep. John Yarmuth | Fmr. Chairman of the US House Budget Committee