Edit: This was originally written in 2009; I republish it on World AIDS Day. Obviously several things have happened since then to the credibility of Komen and LiveStrong, but those updates are easily found.
Several recent diaries have touched on the subject of cause-marketing. The majority of my research on the subject focuses on Product (Red) and HIV/AIDS, however I've extended discussion here to include the Susan G. Komen Foundation, and LiveStrong.
Let me begin by saying I have no objection to people paying whatever they like to support whatever they wish. My concern stems from a fundamental myth of capitalist culture upheld by cause-marketing: consumption is a reasonable and sufficient response to human suffering.
Cause-marketing in the United States has a long history, originating in both the government and private sector. From Donald Duck telling us paying taxes will defeat the Axis to Lance Armstrong's ubiquitous yellow bracelets, cause-marketing pairs behaviors surrounding money, finance, and consumption to morality. This is especially true of those campaigns paring a cause like eliminating a disease with a product.
HIV/AIDS
Product(Red) launched in 2006 and may be the best example of capitalist culture's ability to co opt something as destructive as HIV/AIDS. In the case of a scourge like HIV/AIDS, while the money generated for the Global Fund through Product(Red) is useful, the funds are obtained through a brisk trade in commodity signaling, effectively sanitizing the nature of HIV/AIDS. (Red) states openly that the goal is not charity. (Red) is licensed by various companies such as Gap, Motorola, American Express, Apple, and Armani.
Gap’s statement about its (Red) clothing line is particularly diagnostic of capitalist culture’s ability to sanitize and mask the means of production, as though goods manifest for consumption without human agency or consequence.
For its (RED) line, Gap has drawn design inspiration directly from Africa – its vibrant culture, architecture and people. So the clothes you wear can make a statement about who you are. Wear (RED) and save lives.
Gap's (Red) line products are made out of African cotton in Lesotho, a country with one of the highest percentage of population affected by HIV/AIDS in the world. Presumably the products are manufactured under poor working conditions given Gap's history. Yet, the clothing generates money to fight HIV/AIDS and revitalizes a corporation’s image, while whatever percentage of the charitable donation end up in the hands of pharmaceutical companies who actively worked to suppress generic HIV/AIDS treatments.
Access to drugs would be no problem for those countries wealthy enough to compete in the pharmaceutical market, but those regions of the world that remain unstable will continue to be ravaged by HIV/AIDS.
American Express offers a (Red)Card, featuring a kickback of 1% of each purchase to the Global Fund. Membership can provide exciting experiences like VIP treatment at Aspen's Food and Wine Classic. American Express asks, has their ever been a better reason to shop? In capitalist culture, it's a compelling question and one American Express has asked before.
The phrase "cause-related marketing" was first used by American Express in 1983 to describe its campaign to raise money for the restoration of the Statue of Liberty. American Express made a one-cent donation to the Statue of Liberty every time someone used its charge card; the number of new card holders soon grew by 45%, and card usage increased by 28%. [Source].
American Express’ board remains staffed by people with vested interests in drug companies including Richard Levn, president of Yale University. As of late 2007, Yale University held the key use patent for Zerit, a drug that helps maintain an HIV carrier's immune system, although on 15 March 2001, Bristol-Myers Squibb—Zerit’s manufacturers—said it would no longer try to suppress the distribution of low cost generics in Africa. Unstable treatment helps foster mutations and more robust strains of the virus and it's no coincidence the most difficult strains of HIV/AIDS to combat come from areas of the world where treatment is not consistent.
Pharmaceutical companies fought generics, arguing the cost of researching a drug like Zerit is astronomical. Maybe they could divert funds from lobbying?
In the case of the Gap, cause-marketing has been incredibly effective, going from bad press over an enormous class action lawsuit in 2003 to being lauded as one of the world’s most ethical companies in 2007. While initially coming under fire for the relatively low figure generated to combat HIV/AIDS in Africa, (Red) is now successful and responsible for the largest donation to the Global Fund in history. The caveat that accompanies this looms large: Gap's marketing implies that wearing African cotton makes you CULTU(Red). Does it really? Capitalist culture says so and Gap repackages African culture for western consumers as though any of their products were authentically African beyond the physical location of production. Bizarrely, one of the current (Red) products features the phrase UNCENSO(Red), but this is exactly what cause-marketing does, because it relieves the consumer of the burden of thought. (Red) portrays Africans exactly the way white Western consumers want them to look: vibrant, happy, safe, and healthy, when the reality of AIDS decimated Africa is far from any of these things. The success of (Red), while helpful in the fight against HIV/AIDS, should not come at the expense of knowledge.
Cancer
LiveStrong perpetuates a similar, equally dangerous 'cleansed' presentation of cancer. Doctors like David Ryan, interviewed in a PBS documentary called The Truth About Cancer had this to say about Armstrong:
It's very American to think that you can control your destiny, and in the business world, and in the sports world, there's something to that, um, you can control your destiny; but when it comes to having metastatic lung cancer, or pancreatic cancer, it's all biology. Lance Armstrong's associated with, "If I'm strong enough, and if I fight hard enough, and I'm smart enough, I'm gonna beat it." And so when you tell people that they have metastatic pancreatic cancer, their first reaction is, "Let's beat it; you're just gonna point me in the right direction, or give me the right drugs, and we'll beat it," and they don't understand that Lance Armstrong had, you know, won the lottery, essentially. He had the world's most sensitive cancer to chemotherapy that we know - testicular cancer - and his melted like butter; it had nothing to do with, ah, the fact that he was a Olympic athlete.
[For clarity, when Armstrong was diagnosed his cancer had spread to other parts of his body, so he was not treated exclusively for testicular cancer, but Dr. Ryan's "lottery" comment remains accurate.]
Certainly cause-marketing is useful to the organizations it sponsors, but how helpful is it to misrepresent those causes? Ryan's invocation of the peculiarly American insistence that beating disease requires more personal fortitude than genetic luck speaks to this power. Linguist and cognitive scientist Steven Pinker observes in obituaries, nobody dies from cancer. Instead we succumb to a "lengthy illness" or "lose a battle", as though we might outwit metastatic cells. Barbara Ehenreich's newest work, Bright-Sided discusses this aspect of the cancer/survivor community in greater detail. The power of assertive thinking in the face of adversity is well documented, but the demand for perpetual cheeriness is snake oil which permeates the cancer/survivor community and is ultimately linked to cause-marketing.
Susan G. Komen, the subject of several discussions here, helps maintain a similar image of women with cancer. The women of Race for the Cure and Komen are heroic, often beautiful fighters with permanent smiles, triumphantly defeating their cancer with the full support of family, friends, early screening, competent doctors, and presumably a great insurance plan. If diarists here wish to engage Susan G. Komen, they'll have better luck attacking the practices of the foundation itself and not those in positions of power within the organization. It would seem more productive to criticize the foundation's stock options in companies manufacturing mammogram technology, its ties to AstraZeneca, or its relationship with cancer-causing petrochemicals.
One topic you'll never catch either of the Brinkers mentioning is the need for a cleaner environment. That might be because the international petrochemical giant Occidental Corp., big Komen boosters and the same folks who brought us Love Canal, donates 4,000 square feet of "glass and marble offices" to Komen on the premises of Occidental's Dallas headquarters.
The petrochemical industry, including Occidental, successfully lobbied in 2000 and 2001 for looser EPA air, water and chemical regulations at the same time government researchers reported auto and industrial emissions caused cancer. In March 2002 alone, the EPA approved a two-year delay of the Clean Air Act rules that would cut toxic emissions from 80,000 industrial sources.
The moral imperative should be to reduce the suffering of others through direct action, not compassionate consumption. Consumption ends when the cards are swiped, when the Gap shirt falls apart, when you're finished with your Starbuck's coffee drink on the single day of the year it devotes to HIV/AIDS cause-marketing.
We should fight to end illness, disease, environmental destruction, poverty and illiteracy because we care as humans, because all these problems exist in the same system, and not because such causes are marketed to us by our culture as 'sexy'.
I realize this ending is somewhat abrupt but this diary is becoming a bit unwieldy. Questions and criticism are welcome. I hope this diary and its sources will help answer some questions I've seen in other comments.
Sources:
Dr. Ryan on Lance Armstrong, PBS: The Truth About Cancer
The Marketing of Breast Cancer Mary Ann Swissler, AlterNet.
The Foundation Center FAQ on Cause-Related Marketing
Gap(Red), and other Product (Red) sites.
Buy(Less) - one response to (Red)
Barbara Ehenreich, Bright-Sided
Steven Pinker, The Stuff of Thought
Wed Feb 01, 2012 at 3:44 PM PT: I wrote this some time ago, but decided to republish in light of Komen's entirely political move to pull funding from Planned Parenthood. Planned Parenthood uses funds for many things, including cancer prevention, education, and screening.