Companies Hope to Receive by Giving : Sales: Getting involved in good causes can help firms improve their image.

Smirnoff vodka will pitch a literacy campaign rather than bottles of booze this Christmas.

Tobacco, beer and consumer products giant Philip Morris Cos. Inc. is spending $60 million on ads celebrating the Bill of Rights.

Burger King Corp. dumped its regular fast-food ads over the past month and aired commercials appealing for money for disaster relief efforts.

What’s going on here? Have these companies lost their heads--shucking the pursuit of profit in an altruistic frenzy, egged on by President Bush’s vision of a kinder and gentler society?

Or have they discovered that there is prestige to be gained, attention to be grabbed and money to be made by linking their names to fashionable causes?

The answer may lie somewhere in between, although some marketing experts warn that companies that try to use altruism as a screen for seamier bottom-line objectives risk a consumer backlash.

“There is a limit to how much you can wrap yourself in the flag,” said Mike Hughes, vice chairman and creative director at the Martin Agency, an advertising agency based in Richmond, Va. “A lot of consumers are already coming away with the start of a cynical viewpoint of this thing.”

Companies have been associating themselves with noble causes for years.

“Companies want to get the positive association, the rub-off benefit of whatever institution or cause they are linking themselves to,” said Stephen A. Geyser, professor of marketing at the Harvard Business School.

Dozens of companies lined up, for instance, to sponsor events tied to the restoration of the Statue of Liberty. The Olympics offer an opportunity for companies to cash in every four years on nationalistic fervor.

Members Only went further, dropping its pitches for stylish clothes three years ago and spending all its advertising money on anti-drug messages. Even without product advertising, its sales have risen 22% to about $100 million since taking the new tack in the fall of 1986.

But getting a sales lift is rarely the immediate objective of spending money on good causes. More often, companies simply want to improve their image.

Allen Rosenshine, chairman and chief executive of the advertising agency BBDO Worldwide, said companies promote good causes so consumers see them “as having a social or community conscience.”

That is particularly important, he said, in an era where competing products or services in many areas are viewed as being essentially the same.

A shopper deciding which beer or burgers to buy may understandably be swayed to the company that has shown in its advertising that it shares the same values.

“It helps differentiate them from the competition,” said John Philip Jones, chairman of the advertising department at Syracuse University’s Newhouse School of Public Communications.

Critics warn the do-good approach has its limits and that savvy consumers could turn on companies who use altruism as a screen for self-serving efforts to boost market share or to ward off the regulators.

“Companies have to recognize they are on thin ice here,” said Martin Agency’s Hughes. “If they pretend they are doing it only for the cause, it casts a shadow on everything they do.”

Philip Morris has come under attack from some consumer and health groups who say the company is using the 200th anniversary of the Bill of Rights in a cynical effort to reinforce its cigarette unit’s campaigns for smokers’ rights.

The critics are further enraged that Philip Morris struck a deal that allows it to associate itself with the National Archives in ads that include views of the Capitol rotunda and voices of former presidents and other leaders.

Philip Morris said it backed the campaign to draw attention to an important national anniversary and to its own corporate diversification, and denies that the ads were designed to help protect the cigarette business from further regulation.

The marketers of Smirnoff vodka are spending their entire $1-million holiday ad budget this year on ads for Literacy Volunteers of America, a nonprofit group based in Syracuse, N.Y., that recruits volunteers to teach adults how to read.

“Help Smirnoff end illiteracy in America,” the ads say. The Smirnoff logo appears in the corner.

Charles Traynor, a marketing executive for the Heublein Inc. division that sells Smirnoff, said Smirnoff felt a cause-related campaign would help its ads stand out without resorting to the “gimmicks” such as musical computer chips that other liquor brands have used in their Christmas ads. He said backing a cause would also appeal to Smirnoff drinkers’ “traditional values.”

Smirnoff is contributing $100,000 outright, paying for ads that solicit donations and setting up special displays with a canister in liquor stores for contributions.

Two of the group’s 370 chapters--in Baltimore and Charleston, W.Va.--declined to participate.

“It’s a hard choice to make when you are desperate for money,” admitted Baltimore’s Sister Mary Judith, who heads a community group affiliated with Literacy Volunteers.

Miami-based Burger King had already begun promoting its BK Double hamburgers when an earthquake struck the San Francisco Bay Area.

Chief executive Barry Gibbons told his admakers that Burger King should “give something back” to communities struck by earthquakes and hurricanes. The ads had pledged that Burger King would donate 25 cents to the Red Cross for each BK Double sold through Nov. 23.

The appeal raised $3 million in the first two weeks of the four-week promotion.

Still, the approach doesn’t sit well with such critics as Hughes.

“While what Burger King was doing was good, it wasn’t completely noble when they told me I had to buy a Whopper,” he said.