October is Breast Cancer Awareness month and if you didn’t know that, you were probably living in a cave. Every NFL game has had a bunch of oddly placed pink items on their uniforms and fields. Television and billboard advertising is up in major cities around the country.
I get it. I can’t think of too many people that haven’t been impacted by breast cancer in some way. So yes, awareness is good. It seems like companies have gone a little overboard on the using the awareness month to hawk their own products though. So what do I go to the store to find?
Pepsi + Pink + Obama-like logo and message = Success? I don't think so.
Of course, I came to find out that it wasn’t just Pepsi but a bunch of products in my local Fred Meyer store (a subsidiary of Kroger). The program aims to give three million to breast cancer. Sweet, right?
Riding The Line
How do you ride the line between promoting awareness and promoting your brand (for promoting awareness)? Can you do both effectively or will it always come off as transparent and pathetic? Should we expect companies to do good things without having to promote the crap out of it?
And not that this is the component of this particular promotion but how good is a company that will donate some proceeds of the sale to a charity? So if you’re willing to buy our product, then we’ll donate it (oh, and we’ll throw in the fine print that we won’t donate more than a few thousand bucks).
The Real Problem
If people start to become cynical about a company’s charitable donations, will companies stop donating money to these causes? And if they become cynical about partnerships between companies and charities, will the associated charities see a lowered reputation? The real problem is that the charities could potentially suffer from cynicism and companies that pull out of their causes. Companies don’t need charities to hawk their wares but charities often need all of the promotion they can get.
What do you think about companies using good causes to promote their products? What works and what doesn’t?
October 12, 2009 at 6:54 am
It’s always a fine line for companies to walk, but I think we may be far across the over the top line when it comes to breast cancer research. The concern that not only companies have, but the research organizations themselves have is our limited attention span, and belief that all problems can be solved instantly. For years now American’s have been funding various research, but with little results to show for it. Or so they think. Spending 5 bucks on a pepsi results in a teeny tiny fraction of your 5 bucks going to research. Writing a check for 5 dollars is exponentially more powerful. To me when a company says they are doing someting to increase awareness, I believe they expect us to confuse awareness with avarice.
October 12, 2009 at 10:01 am
Of more interest is how corporations will align themselves with “trendy” charities. Anything with children, anything breast related (for obvious reasons…)& heart related.
Funny how I never seem to see media campaigns supporting care for the elderly or research into mental illness and learning difficulties.
Not “marketable”
October 12, 2009 at 10:12 am
Very few companies give donations without any form of recognition. It is no different than paid advertising with the advertiser being the charity. The charity however, also gets the publicity.
In the case of Breast Cancer, there is pink everywhere from lawn tools to photocopy paper supporting Breast Cancer. Both sides are taking advantage of the others reputation.
I certainly do not take away from the importance of finding a cure for Breast Cancer and I admire the advertising and awareness genius behind their campaign but I must admit I am getting tired of the incessent bombardment of pink and the Breast Cancer “movement” and I feel other worthy causes are receiving less of the limited donation dollars as a result of it. At some point I think people will realize that and stop supporting Breast Cancer for that reason alone. Hopefully when that happens we are close to a cure.
October 12, 2009 at 10:51 am
My thoughts… breast cancers was ignored for so long, men were perceived as not being interested in finding a cure. Overkill now? That’s ok… we’ll take it.
October 12, 2009 at 2:35 pm
Pamela, that is a fairly bold statement with no information to back it up. By the way, how much have you donated to prostate cancer or testicular cancer or all of the other worthy diseases that are devastating to individuals and their families. I am not looking for your answer but my belief is there are limited funds to go to charities, especially with our current economic times. The overkill of advertising by breast cancer may come back to haunt them when people realize other worthy causes are getting less of a limited resource. Companies will need to show their sponsorship of other worthy causes with the same gusto they show for breast cancer.
October 12, 2009 at 2:52 pm
I think we should also consider the impact these promotion / awareness / sales campaigns have on those who are actually living with breast cancer. In an article in the October issue of Good Housekeeping, a breast cancer survivor talks about how much she hates seeing pink everything in stores. She said she felt like people were making money off of her illness. So — if many people feel like her, how will this negatively affect these companies who have jumped on the bandwagon? Instead of generating good will — it may have the opposite effect!
October 14, 2009 at 2:32 pm
Enough of the pink tinged uniforms in the NFL already!