The Times Comment page: Don't be pinkwashed
By David Rowan
It makes you feel good, but caring consumerism is not the best way to help charity
Grab your pink Burberry trenchcoat, slip on those ribbon-covered Skechers "Awareness" shoes: it's time to go shopping if you want to cure breast cancer. If you have not yet stocked up in preparation for tomorrow's "Wear It Pink" charity fundraisers, dash out and ease your conscience at shops from Specsavers to Swarovski. Why, you can even put your pink purchases on to MBNA's new breast-cancer Visa card. Who ever suggested that big business lacked a heart?
Only a colour-blind shopper can have failed to notice that it is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. From Aveda to Asda, corporations have been out-pinking each other to offer charity-backed merchandise intended to "support the fight" against the disease. Whether your tastes embrace Revlon eyeliner or Royal Doulton figurines, the shops have been packed with limited-edition cosmetics, jewellery, perfume, lingerie, even fluffy rabbit ear muffs, whose sales receipts all contribute in varying degrees to breast-cancer charities. The charity gains financially, the company earns kudos, and the benevolent consumer gets to feel good about his or her contribution. What could be more win-win-win than that?
Guilt-free shopping has a price, however, particularly when corporate altruism is not all it seems. Retail partnerships are an increasingly significant source of funding to these charities, which rightly welcome the cash to fight a disease that kills 13,000 British women each year. Yet consider whose interests are best being served by the fashionable notion that consumerism, rather than tax-efficient direct donations, is the most effective way to confront this illness. By lending their good names to shareholder-driven market opportunists, breast-cancer charities are selling themselves, and their research, short.
Let's just see how generous their corporate benefactors are proving in practice. Certainly, there are some committed corporate donors who between them are pledging millions of pounds every year. Yet look at the "pink products" being promoted by the Breast Cancer Campaign and judge which party is deriving the ultimate benefit. Supporters who enjoy reading romantic fiction are urged to buy Mills & Boon's Modern Romance titles - which will earn the campaign a mere 10p for every £2.75 sale. Follow the charity's advice to buy from the Ronhill Elite running and fitness clothing line, and it stands to make an entire 15p on every purchase. The same questionable generosity goes for Debenhams (deals include a 50p donation from its top-selling men's lines), Filofax (£1 on each £20 pink pen) and Royal Doulton (a more substantial £12.50 - but on a trinket priced at ten times that).
Breast Cancer Care is promoting a pink Olympus camera that earns it just £5 of the £179.99 price; Breakthrough Breast Cancer has lent its name to Avon's "Breast Cancer Crusade" hand cream. For each pound, the cause gets only 10p. In some cases, the good cause is making a far higher proportion, and fashion and design companies, in particular, appear genuinely committed to fundraising. Yet too often, consumers are left in the dark about the amounts raised. And they are hardly likely to find an assistant at the Clinique make-up counter suggesting that, ahem, a more logical means of benefiting their chosen charity would be to write out a cheque and send it there directly. Why, Gordon Brown would even boost it by 28 per cent with Gift Aid.
It is clear why these companies are queueing up to strike these deals. Cause-related marketing is today's hot strategy for companies concerned to boost their brand image and differentiate themselves in the marketplace. Heart disease and lung cancer may kill more women, but breast cancer has the glow of a "sin-free" illness, not tied to smoking, over-eating or sex. It also strikes a powerful emotional response, as most of us have known someone touched by the illness.
That is why, since the pink ribbons were first promoted 13 years ago by Evelyn Lauder of Estée Lauder, they have attracted corporate sponsors ranging from Ford to American Express.
The strategy delivers for them. 3M, the company behind Post-it Notes, claimed last year that its breast-cancer awareness campaign, involving pink paper, reached more than three million people and increased sales 80 per cent over expectations. It even won an award for the campaign from the industry's Cause Marketing Forum, which also singled out Quilted Northern for "brilliantly leverag(ing) the breast cancer issue to enable a toilet tissue brand to strike an emotional chord with targeted consumers ". Remind me, why are we using a serious illness to sell toilet roll?
The other reason that corporate marketeers like to associate their brands with breast-cancer research is the "pinkwashing" effect. As large cosmetics companies continue to use endocrine-disrupting parabens and possibly hormone-mimicking phthalates in their products, the curious consumer might ask whether their moisturisers and lipsticks are contributing to the rise in cases of the disease. The companies, of course, deny any firm scientific connection, but for PR purposes, the breast-cancer awareness link can't do any harm. It also makes a complex issue rather simple: if you want to cure cancer, buy more of our products.
If you really wish to make a difference tomorrow, forget the fluorescent pink leotard, ignore the pink crystal bracelet and make a tax-efficient donation to a cancer-research charity. Better still, write to your MP calling for more generous public sector funding that may one day provide a cure. What else would you be doing, shopping?
(The Times Comment page, October 27 2005)
It makes you feel good, but caring consumerism is not the best way to help charity
Grab your pink Burberry trenchcoat, slip on those ribbon-covered Skechers "Awareness" shoes: it's time to go shopping if you want to cure breast cancer. If you have not yet stocked up in preparation for tomorrow's "Wear It Pink" charity fundraisers, dash out and ease your conscience at shops from Specsavers to Swarovski. Why, you can even put your pink purchases on to MBNA's new breast-cancer Visa card. Who ever suggested that big business lacked a heart?
Only a colour-blind shopper can have failed to notice that it is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. From Aveda to Asda, corporations have been out-pinking each other to offer charity-backed merchandise intended to "support the fight" against the disease. Whether your tastes embrace Revlon eyeliner or Royal Doulton figurines, the shops have been packed with limited-edition cosmetics, jewellery, perfume, lingerie, even fluffy rabbit ear muffs, whose sales receipts all contribute in varying degrees to breast-cancer charities. The charity gains financially, the company earns kudos, and the benevolent consumer gets to feel good about his or her contribution. What could be more win-win-win than that?
Guilt-free shopping has a price, however, particularly when corporate altruism is not all it seems. Retail partnerships are an increasingly significant source of funding to these charities, which rightly welcome the cash to fight a disease that kills 13,000 British women each year. Yet consider whose interests are best being served by the fashionable notion that consumerism, rather than tax-efficient direct donations, is the most effective way to confront this illness. By lending their good names to shareholder-driven market opportunists, breast-cancer charities are selling themselves, and their research, short.
Let's just see how generous their corporate benefactors are proving in practice. Certainly, there are some committed corporate donors who between them are pledging millions of pounds every year. Yet look at the "pink products" being promoted by the Breast Cancer Campaign and judge which party is deriving the ultimate benefit. Supporters who enjoy reading romantic fiction are urged to buy Mills & Boon's Modern Romance titles - which will earn the campaign a mere 10p for every £2.75 sale. Follow the charity's advice to buy from the Ronhill Elite running and fitness clothing line, and it stands to make an entire 15p on every purchase. The same questionable generosity goes for Debenhams (deals include a 50p donation from its top-selling men's lines), Filofax (£1 on each £20 pink pen) and Royal Doulton (a more substantial £12.50 - but on a trinket priced at ten times that).
Breast Cancer Care is promoting a pink Olympus camera that earns it just £5 of the £179.99 price; Breakthrough Breast Cancer has lent its name to Avon's "Breast Cancer Crusade" hand cream. For each pound, the cause gets only 10p. In some cases, the good cause is making a far higher proportion, and fashion and design companies, in particular, appear genuinely committed to fundraising. Yet too often, consumers are left in the dark about the amounts raised. And they are hardly likely to find an assistant at the Clinique make-up counter suggesting that, ahem, a more logical means of benefiting their chosen charity would be to write out a cheque and send it there directly. Why, Gordon Brown would even boost it by 28 per cent with Gift Aid.
It is clear why these companies are queueing up to strike these deals. Cause-related marketing is today's hot strategy for companies concerned to boost their brand image and differentiate themselves in the marketplace. Heart disease and lung cancer may kill more women, but breast cancer has the glow of a "sin-free" illness, not tied to smoking, over-eating or sex. It also strikes a powerful emotional response, as most of us have known someone touched by the illness.
That is why, since the pink ribbons were first promoted 13 years ago by Evelyn Lauder of Estée Lauder, they have attracted corporate sponsors ranging from Ford to American Express.
The strategy delivers for them. 3M, the company behind Post-it Notes, claimed last year that its breast-cancer awareness campaign, involving pink paper, reached more than three million people and increased sales 80 per cent over expectations. It even won an award for the campaign from the industry's Cause Marketing Forum, which also singled out Quilted Northern for "brilliantly leverag(ing) the breast cancer issue to enable a toilet tissue brand to strike an emotional chord with targeted consumers ". Remind me, why are we using a serious illness to sell toilet roll?
The other reason that corporate marketeers like to associate their brands with breast-cancer research is the "pinkwashing" effect. As large cosmetics companies continue to use endocrine-disrupting parabens and possibly hormone-mimicking phthalates in their products, the curious consumer might ask whether their moisturisers and lipsticks are contributing to the rise in cases of the disease. The companies, of course, deny any firm scientific connection, but for PR purposes, the breast-cancer awareness link can't do any harm. It also makes a complex issue rather simple: if you want to cure cancer, buy more of our products.
If you really wish to make a difference tomorrow, forget the fluorescent pink leotard, ignore the pink crystal bracelet and make a tax-efficient donation to a cancer-research charity. Better still, write to your MP calling for more generous public sector funding that may one day provide a cure. What else would you be doing, shopping?
(The Times Comment page, October 27 2005)
posted by David Rowan at Thursday, October 27, 2005
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