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Starting from the top, cause marketing is not synonymous with affinity marketing. Cause marketing can be a PR strategy, but it's not a subset of PR. Most cause marketing is, well, marketing. Does marketing using emotion? Without a doubt. But in an of itself there's nothing illegal or even shady about that. I'd being willing to bet that the CMD uses emotion in its appeals to donors and prospects. Is that exploitative? Well that kinda depends, doesn't it? If the prospect is in full control of their faculties, I'd say no. But if they are, I have a hard time imagining how emotional appeals are more exploitative than non-emotional ones. As for the claim that it's 'spreading like wildfire' the fact is that for the last decade cause marketing hovered around 10% of the overall sponsorship market according to IEG. And sponsorship as a whole is growing, but hardly at 'wildfire' levels. Does cause marketing have problems? Sure. Like in the cases where the match between the sponsor and cause is inappropriate or when campaigns or sponsors aren't transparent. But it's hardly a threat to democracy in general or the Republic in particular.