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Philanthropy through rose-coloured glasses
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Nowhere is the corporatisation of philanthropy more evident than in the colour pink. October is National Breast Cancer Month and Australians are witnessing an explosion of pink products. Led by the National Breast Cancer Foundation’s handy “go shopping” guide, here are just some of the companies that have pinked their products in Australia:
When it comes to raising money, a recent experiment at the University of Chicago showed that it’s always much easier to get people to cough up when there’s a product attached. And no-one understands this better than the pink movement, which presents a win-win situation for corporates and breast cancer charities — companies ride the goodwill wave and sell more product; foundations get lots of money in their coffers, not to mention a cost-efficient way of spreading the breast cancer message.
In fact, the National Breast Cancer Foundation (NBCF) gets so much free publicity via its corporate partners that it doesn’t need a formal advertising budget. Not only that but News Ltd is a diamond partner — which might explain the snicky Strewth column in The Oz on Tuesday, belittling the $25,000 raised by The Sydney Morning Herald’s pink edition. But is it all rose-tinted? While it’s hard to be curmudgeonly when the pink army is raising money and awareness for an important issue, there’s something vaguely unsettling about the market saturation, perhaps due in part to level of attention given to a single cause. The National Breast Cancer Centre, which was established in 1995, has since secured about $34 million in funding, reports The Oz. During the same period, ovarian cancer received just $800,000, while a range of other women’s cancers missed out on special funding. Even the NBCF seems to be overwhelmed by its own popularity. While the foundation is not going to stop taking on partners in future years, a spokeswoman told Crikey that the foundation will work hard to manage the “exponential” growth of sponsors while starting to consolidate other areas of the business, like volunteering programs, employee giving and corporate social responsibility. Incredibly, there are only four people in its marketing division. Meanwhile, it’s interesting that companies are clamouring to be pink — breast cancer wasn’t always the most popular girl in school. As Barbara Ehrenreich wrote in her excellent Harper’s essay in 2001, “Welcome to Cancerland: A Mammogram Leads to a Cult of Pink Kitsch”:
So has the pendulum swung too far the other way? In America, where the pink movement took off, there’s a requisite counter-movement, Think before you pink. Listing a bevy of pink products, they encourage consumers to think critically about what they’re really buying:
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