• by Sarah Mahoney  @mahoney_sarah, March 5, 2008

Avon Products Inc., which has long made women's causes a core part of its brand platform, is launching its first global fund-raising product: A little blue bracelet designed to prevent domestic violence.

While the company announced the bracelet at the United Nations, it made its debut on "The Today Show" on Tuesday on the wrist of actress Reese Witherspoon, who signed on to be Avon's first "global ambassador" last summer. At that time, the company said she would help focus on its core concerns of breast cancer, domestic violence and emergency relief initiatives, as well as product development initiatives, and appear in Avon advertising around the world.

The launch comes at a time when Avon is extending its considerable charitable clout beyond breast cancer. (The Avon Foundation has raised and awarded more than $500 million; of that, $450 million has been on behalf of breast cancer.) In recent years, it has expanded its focus to domestic violence, both with its Need for Speed Relay Against Domestic Violence races and its Speak Out Against Domestic Violence awareness campaign, with actress Salma Hayek. And it has also made emergency and disaster relief a higher-profile cause.

Last year, Avon beefed up its commitment to empowerment issues, launching the Hello Tomorrow Fund, a grassroots program in over a dozen countries, in which Avon provides cash awards to individuals to launch or expand programs that empower women.

In the U.S., for example, the Hello Tomorrow Fund provides one $5,000 award each week "to an individual whose initiative both advances the interests of women and ultimately improves society." And earlier this year, it signed on personal finance guru Suze Orman as a consultant, making her available to Avon associates via email and seminars, to help empower them financially.

While another company might have to worry that too many causes water down its efforts, says David Hessekiel, president of the Cause Marketing Forum, based in Rye, N.Y., Avon's extensive fund-raising credentials put it in a somewhat different league. Nor does it have to worry about being associated with domestic violence--a cause that has made plenty of other companies wary.

"Avon knows its market so well," he says, "and knows its audience is as much its employees and reps as it is the outside consumer world. And it really has done a great deal to empower women, so that it can embrace a cause like this in a way other companies might not."

While Avon has frequently used products as fund-raisers, this is its first global product. The company says all profits from the sale of the $3 bracelet will go to United Nations Development Fund for Women, devoted to promoting women's empowerment and ending violence against women. And Avon will match the first $500,000 in bracelet sales for a total donation of $1 million.

The announcement was made as part of the UN's preparation for International Women's Day, March 8.